Ortega Highway Patrols Considered : Air, Ground Teams May Search for Additional Chemicals

Air and ground patrols of Ortega Highway, where a third batch of dangerous chemicals was found Wednesday night, will be discussed by state and county officials meeting today in San Juan Capistrano.

A 14-mile section of the mountain road, which connects Riverside and Orange counties, was shut down from 9 p.m. Wednesday to 5 a.m. Thursday when 30 to 40 containers with a variety of deadly and explosive chemicals were discovered on the roadside--the third find in two days.

“This is not being done by someone who doesn’t know what he is doing,” said Dr. Philip Edelman, adviser to the county’s hazardous materials team. “It’s being done with wanton neglect for the welfare of anyone involved.”

Ken Daily, a California Highway Patrol spokesman, said: “The No. 1 item is to try to figure out the feasibility of making some kind of sweep of the Ortega to locate and clean up any other possible sites. That may not sound like much, but it’s going to be one heck of a job.”

The options include searching the highway by airplane or helicopter, he said, “but the brush makes it awfully hard to see anything underneath.”

Not Enough Units

Daily said the CHP does not have enough units to significantly increase patrols on the highway. Two CHP cars monitor the highway “sporadically,” he said, and not at all on some days. “We may have to get out and check it on foot,” he added.

Lt. Dick Olson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said that remoteness and the length of the road make prevention of illegal dumping almost impossible.

“A great deal of traffic goes over that road, and it wouldn’t be that hard to just throw it out the window,” he said.

The latest discovery occurred even as authorities were trying to determine the source of similar chemicals found Monday in containers at two spots about five miles away.

Investigators Wednesday pored over evidence salvaged from Monday night’s find, but they came up with few clues, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Diane Stavenhagen Kadletz. Fingerprinting proved almost useless, she said, and there were no labels to indicate that any of the chemicals had been purchased recently.

But the chemicals found Wednesday may be more helpful, she said, because they “appear to be more specialized in their uses. “If that turns out to be the case, it may help narrow down the sources, or lead us to a particular industry.”

The investigators, from county, state and federal agencies, will gather today at the Long Beach headquarters of Crosby and Overton, a private disposal firm hired to clean the three dump sites, and examine all of the chemicals, Olson said.

Because the toxic substances are so different, Kadletz said, investigators do not believe the caches found Monday and Wednesday were dumped by the same person.

Arsenic Suspected

Edelman, who also is medical director of the regional poison center at UCI Medical Center, said the chemicals had not yet been positively identified. But he said he was “very concerned” about what appeared to be a compound “similar to arsenic,” and esters, a family of organic chemicals.

“These are not at all common; I can’t even venture a guess as to what industry might use them,” he said.

Some of the chemicals discovered Monday night were so unstable that they had to be blown up at the site; the batch found Wednesday night contained chemicals that were more toxic and corrosive, said Steve Wong, assistant director of the county Environmental Health Department.

The chemicals began to eat through the protective gloves on one of the hazardous materials specialists Wednesday night, Edelman said.