Residents Again Flee Toxic Cloud : 1,000 on Eastside Routed by Fumes From Same Plant

More than 1,000 Montebello residents were forced to evacuate their homes again Sunday by a chemical cloud from the same plant that had triggered a mass evacuation the day before, while two other chemical leaks in Southern California added to the miseries of a stifling weekend.

The Montebello residents were evacuated for several hours early Sunday when authorities discovered another toxic cloud drifting from the City of Commerce plant of Grow Group Inc., which produces chlorine tablets for swimming pools. The incident occurred as crews hired by the company worked to clean up the debris from Saturday’s fire.

The back-to-back evacuations of the Eastside communities could have been avoided, a county health inspector charged, had the company taken proper steps to deal with a health department violation issued after a similar incident Aug. 10.

Citation Recalled

“This company was cited and they should have taken action for this not to happen again,” said Miguel Garcia, a Los Angeles County hazardous waste specialist.

A spokesman for the firm denied that the two incidents were related and said his firm was working to resolve the problems. “We certainly had an action plan,” Grow Group division President Les Wilde said. “I know we were working with all the various agencies.”

Meanwhile in Orange County, Santa Ana fire officials evacuated about 100 mostly elderly residents of the Villa Grande Mobile Home Estates around 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. after a fire erupted at Kuida Farm Supply Co., a fertilizer and pesticide storehouse. The fire caused insecticides and fungicides to combust, releasing what officials called a poisonous “witches brew” that included chlorine gas.

Difficult to Evaluate

A spokesman for the Santa Ana Fire Department said that firefighters who initially responded to the call complained of nausea but that it was difficult to evaluate the toxicity of the gas.

And in Carson, an equipment failure at a Texaco plant created a white cloud of sulfur dioxide that nearly forced the evacuation of about 5,000 residents in nearby housing tracts. County fire crews and sheriff’s deputies said the cloud dispersed just as the evacuation was about to begin.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Carter Fitzpatrick said deputies came “very close” to ordering an evacuation of a residential area.

The first weekend toxic accident occurred shortly after midnight Friday, when 2,000 pounds of smoldering chemicals in large drums released a toxic cloud that blanketed a half-mile area in the City of Commerce. Authorities said they evacuated between 10,000 and 27,000 people for up to 12 hours from the City of Commerce, Montebello, Monterey Park and the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles.

Then, at 5:19 a.m. Sunday, one barrel of trichloro-triazine-trione, the same chlorine compound, began to vaporize and fumes drifted eastward toward Montebello, causing city officials to evacuate the 1,000 to 1,500 city residents who live south of Washington Boulevard. City buses were made available to transport evacuees and Red Cross centers were opened at Schurr and Montebello high schools, said Police Lt. Joe Juiliano.

The area was reopened at 7:10 a.m. after county hazardous materials crews neutralized the chemicals with water.

Fire crews were called in again at 9:15 a.m. to neutralize another reactive barrel, but Juiliano said no evacuation was necessary. The clean-up firm, Disposal Control Service of Upland, then resumed work.

Ordered to Close

On Saturday, county health authorities ordered the Grow Group plant closed and cited management--for the second time in a month--for improper disposal of chemicals and for lacking a contingency plan in case of emergencies, Garcia said. They also added a “nuisance” violation and scheduled an administrative hearing with company officials for Thursday.

Garcia said the health department also has the option of asking the district attorney to file charges. If the company is found negligent, it can be fined up to $25,000 daily per count, he added.

Two men remained in stable condition Sunday at Santa Marta Hospital in East Los Angeles after being treated for nausea and chest pains as a result of Saturday’s toxic cloud. Thomas David, 39, of Huntington Beach, and Bryan Bernard, 31, of Covina, had been working the graveyard shift at a nearby paper factory when the accident occurred. More than 60 others were treated and released Saturday. No injuries were reported Sunday.

In the Carson incident, the chemical released was an irritant that could cause illness in high concentrations, said Robert Morris, assistant plant manager at the Texaco Sulfur Recovery Plant on Alameda Street. But the gas was vented from high smokestacks and dispersed before it became a problem. Two people were taken by ambulance to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, but a nursing supervisor said they declined treatment.

Temperature Blamed

Morris cited high temperatures as the preliminary cause of the failure in electrical and control equipment, although he said the exact cause was yet to be determined. The plant automatically shut down when the accident occurred shortly after 1 p.m. and reopened about two hours later, he said.

The repeated evacuations riled members of a Montebello neighborhood group, who called a press conference Sunday morning to complain that authorities had bungled the procedure. The United Neighborhoods Organization, another Eastside community group, had made similar accusations, saying that Saturday’s evacuation missed entire neighborhoods, was conducted in English only and failed to provide public transportation. UNO also demanded assurances from Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman that it was safe to return home.

Reached for comment Sunday, Edelman said he relies on officials in the field to make emergency judgments, but added that UNO raised some “worthwhile issues.”

“We will be asking our health department (and) state people who have jurisdiction to investigate risk to residents,” Edelman said. “Obviously we ought to look at what steps can be taken to prevent this from recurring.”

Both groups also demanded that cities and Los Angeles County come up with a unified plan to deal with hazardous waste emergencies and better enforce existing toxics laws.

“The whole thing was handled badly,” said Bill Molinari, a spokesman for South Montebello Area Residents Together (SMART). “If there was some kind of plan it didn’t work.”

Molinari and others said they plan to oppose a plan by the Montebello City Council to permit additional industrial development until city officials formulate a plan to deal with toxic emergencies. They said that on both days, they received conflicting instructions from officials who failed to provide an evacuation route or explain where they should go.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block was on vacation and could not be reached for comment. Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Chris Gutierrez said that “We’re not going to comment on opinions at this point.”

Department’s Decision

Responding to criticism, including suggestions that the mass evacuation was unnecessary, Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman John Lenihan said that on both days, the Fire Department made the decision to evacuate and set the geographic boundaries. The Sheriff’s Department’s Emergency Operations Center carried out the evacuations on Saturday; the Montebello Police Department evacuated residents of that city on Sunday.

Eastside community leaders said that this weekend’s toxic leaks underscore their concern that they are particularly vulnerable to chemical dangers because their homes and schools often are near plants that handle chemicals.

Less than four months ago, an estimated 11,000 people, including many schoolchildren, were evacuated from Lincoln Heights after fire broke out in a metal plating factory.

“We have all these chemicals so close to our homes,” said Fe De La Torre of South Montebello. “It’s very difficult and very scary.”

About 40 county health department inspectors are supposed to visit the 13,000 firms that generate hazardous waste once every two years, said Garcia, the toxic waste specialist.

But he added that the department has lagged in its inspections.

“To tell the truth, we’re behind,” Garcia said. “We don’t have enough staff.”

Staff writers Edward J. Boyer, Lynn Smith and Kimberly L. Jackson contributed to this story.