300 in Orange Evacuated After Fumes Escape Firm

Chemical vapors spewing from an underground tank at an Orange plastics firm forced nearly 300 people to evacuate their homes for three hours Monday night before firefighters brought the disturbance under control.

The vapors, which were triggered by a chemical reaction in a 6,000-gallon resin tank at the Fiberite West Coast Corp. plant, were thought to contain potentially toxic byproducts such as phenyl, formaldehyde and methane, fire officials said.

No injuries were reported during the evacuation, which primarily affected a mobile home park near the plant and several other homes. Residents were sent to Yorba Junior High School in Orange.

It was not the first time that such an accident had occurred at the Fiberite plant. Last year, Fiberite settled a lawsuit by 28 individuals who claimed that they were harmed in a 1979 accident when a cloud of steam and chemicals poured from the plant.

Plaintiffs, who said they inhaled fumes that spread over the Richland High School-Killefer Child Development Center area in Orange, charged that the chemicals caused chronic liver disease, peripheral nerve problems, weakened immunity systems, respiratory ailments and birth defects.

Other Incidents Recalled

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but a source in the case said at the time that Fiberite had agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle Orange County’s first major toxic injury trial.

Since then, residents said, there have been several other incidents in which the plant spewed chemical vapors into the air, forcing evacuation of nearby homes.

As they stood outside the evacuation center Monday night, some residents were visibly angered over the most recent incident.

“You bet your boots we’re sick of this,” said Leonard Mayhugh, 60, as he stood outside the temporary evacuation center. Mayhugh said he has lived for 3 1/2 years at the Carriage Trailer Park on Collins Avenue near the plant.

“It’s happened (the evacuations) four times in the last couple of years,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of old and sick people in that park. Myself, I got heart trouble. I wish the city would look into this.”

Bill Green, 36, agreed, noting, “It’s a lot of inconvenience, but sometimes this is what happens when you live on the edge of a commercial area.” Green said he could recall “at least four other” incidents of chemical accidents at Fiberite and other nearby firms causing residents to leave their homes.

Fire officials said Monday’s accident was caused by a spontaneous chemical reaction in a tank filled with industrial resin that first created intense heat and then spawned potentially dangerous vapors that begin drifting in a cloud above the plant.

A man who identified himself as a plant mechanic said in a phone interview that the situation was “under control” soon after the incident began, around 6 p.m., and that there was “really no problem here.”

The most dangerous byproduct in the vapors was phenyl, and firefighters from the county and Orange had to determine the concentration of such byproducts before they could bring the water-soluble products under control by dousing them with water, according to Steve Staump, a spokesman for the Orange Fire Department.

Besides approximately 225 residents in the nearby mobile home park and adjacent residences, police evacuated 50 to 75 workers in the Fiberite plant, Staump added.

Hazardous materials teams from Huntington Beach and the county rushed to the scene, along with seven units of Orange fire equipment and representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Air Quality Management District.

The evacuation area extended from Maple Street on the south to Lemmon Street on the west, Collins Avenue on the north and Glassell Street on the east. Residents said police went door-to-door alerting them of the problem.

Harry Huggins, spokesman for the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, said his organization handled the evacuation preparations at Yorba Junior High much as it did in the Anaheim chemical fire and resulting mass evacuation of thousands of residents in three cities last month.