Chemical Spill Is Third for Oceanside Company

Police evacuated about 20 people along industrial Airport Road Tuesday night after a chemical spill occurred at the J.C. Schumacher Co., a company which has had two similar industrial accidents since last year, authorities said.

Police closed the Oceanside Municipal Airport from 9:30 p.m. to 10:40 p.m. as a cloud of chemical vapors formed over the airport, said police Sgt. Bill Krunglevich. Flights were diverted to airports in San Diego and Palomar. Nine people, including one police officer, were treated at Tri-City Hospital after they inhaled the gas, a hospital spokesman said.

The spill occurred when a glass container filled with a bromine solution broke about 9:30 p.m., said John Schumacher, the firm’s president. Plant employees filled a concrete safety dike surrounding the container with absorbent material, but some of the liquid turned into gas and leaked from the building, he said. The company purifies silicon for use in computer chips, he said.

The Oceanside Fire Department issued an indefinite stop-work order against the company’s research and development operations, a fire inspector said. Schumacher said the company has shut down the part of the facility in which the leak occurred. The firm, located at 580

Airport Road, will move into a new building in August or September, said Schumacher, adding that the new facility will contain additional safety features.

“We’re definitely not happy. It’s becoming a recurring occurrence,” Oceanside Fire Marshal Ted Wackerman said. About 5 gallons of the bromine solution spilled during the accident, he added.

Al Danzig, chief of enforcement with the Air Pollution Control District in San Diego County, said the 11-year-old J.C. Schumacher Co. was cited for bromine-solution leaks in June, 1984, and last April.

J.C. Schumacher paid a $1,000 fine for the 1984 spill, on a public nuisance violation, and could face criminal prosecution for the April incident, Danzig said.

In April, several people working in a building adjacent to the Schumacher plant were taken to the hospital after complaining of a skin rash, and one man claims to have developed recurring pneumonia as a result of inhaling the fumes, Danzig said.

“The materials we use are irritants, not poisons,” said Schumacher. “That’s good news and bad news. You’re eyes might burn and you might develop a skin rash if you’re exposed to them. The good news is that you can smell them at levels below where it’s dangerous.”

“This is not by any stretch of the imagination typical for a company to have so many violations,” Danzig said.

Schumacher said the spill was “ironic.” The container that broke was part of an experiment to find out if the waste produced when the silicon is purified could be eliminated, he said.

“The mixture reacted more rapidly than the system could handle, causing the glass flask to break,” Schumacher said.

“When you are just in the starting stages of developing a process, you can have problems,” he said. “Experiments don’t always turn out right.”