Simi Valley Evacuation : Agencies Reacted Well in Gas Crisis, Report Says

With minor exceptions, Simi Valley and Ventura County agencies coped well with the evacuation last month of about 12,000 residents during a chlorine gas leak, according to a report released Thursday by the city’s police chief and two City Council members.

The lapses mentioned in the report, including a brief breakdown in communications between county firefighters, school district officials and police officers, posed no threat to public safety, said Lindsey P. Miller, Simi Valley police chief.

“I think we did pretty well considering it was the first test of our emergency preparedness program,” said Councilwoman Ann Rock, who helped write the report with Miller and Councilwoman Vicky Howard. “There’s definitely some room for improvement, but we’re working on it.”

On Jan. 5, about 12,000 people were evacuated from a 5.2-square-mile area of the city when a cloud of potentially lethal chlorine gas leaked from the Travelin’ West Textiles plant. Twenty people, including five firefighters and a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy, were treated at a local hospital for inhaling the toxic gas. Two others were admitted to the hospital and later released.

The report generally praises officials from 23 city and county agencies for their handling of the emergency, which began about 7:30 a.m. and ended almost 12 hours later. The officials met shortly after the incident began at the Simi Valley police station on Cochran Street and remained there throughout the crisis, the report said.

But city police and the county Fire Department lost contact for about an hour because of a misunderstanding about the proposed location of a joint command post, the report said. Bob Hunt, a deputy city manager, said the lack of communication was exacerbated by the failure of several portable radios carried by police. The radios failed to work because of bad batteries, he said.

Hunt said the Police Department has already purchased additional batteries in case of a future emergency.

Other minor communications problems included a lack of coordination between city officials and representatives of the Simi Valley Unified School District and the American Red Cross, the report said.

For instance, for about half an hour, city officials were unaware that Red Cross and school officials had moved the evacuation center from Royal High School to Simi Valley High School because of chlorine odors, the report said.