Shell Refinery Incident Spurs Effort to Warn Schools of Emissions

On the morning of Nov. 16, a cloud containing hydrogen sulfide, a potentially toxic chemical, escaped from Shell Oil Co.’s Carson refinery.

The low-flying cloud did not contain enough of the chemical to pose a serious health threat, and no one was reported hospitalized. But as the cloud drifted west and southwest from the refinery at Wilmington Avenue and Del Amo Boulevard, covering a large section of Carson and approaching Torrance, many in its path experienced breathing difficulty, eye irritation, headaches and other problems.

Company officials immediately notified key government agencies of the release and later fielded a barrage of telephone complaints. No one, however, called Carson’s 232nd Place Elementary School, where numerous students and teachers felt the chemical cloud’s effects.

“Our only notification was that we smelled something, we had trouble breathing and our eyes started to burn,” said kindergarten teacher Alan Guttman. “We had 200 kids on the yard for recess. We had the children directly exposed.”

Guttman and Colleen Garcia-Butler, a Carson resident who shares Guttman’s concerns, have begun lobbying local authorities to improve plans for notifying schools about chemical releases.

The responsibility for school notification should be better defined, they say, particularly in a place as industrialized as the South Bay. Said Garcia-Butler: “Being in this area with train lines, chemical companies and refineries all around, it seems like a wise precaution.”

Local officials apparently agree. Said Lawrence Olson, Carson’s public safety director: “I think they have a point. I think that we have a subject worth considering.”

Shell Oil has agreed to host a meeting on the issue Tuesday. Among those scheduled to attend are officials from the county Fire and Sheriff’s departments, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the city of Carson.

Said Shell spokesman Gene Munger: “Rather than doing finger-pointing, the opportunity exists to sit down and say how can we improve notification procedures. . . . We believe the system can be better managed than it was in this situation.”

Last week, harbor area members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing teachers in the Los Angeles school district, passed a motion calling on community and industry leaders to develop an effective school notification system. Guttman, who offered the motion, says the union hopes to see the system developed for all South Bay schools in the district.

He said he expects UTLA’s main governing body to consider a similar motion Dec. 19.

Prompting these actions is the confusion caused by the Nov. 16 chemical release, which Shell said occurred accidentally as a gasoline processing unit was being tested.

Munger said that soon after the release, his company began notifying government agencies, including the county Fire and Sheriff’s departments, the state Office of Emergency Services and the AQMD.

Local emergency officials say that if an evacuation had been necessary, the county Fire Department would have decided what areas to clear and local law enforcement agencies would have been instructed to carry out the evacuation.

But since an evacuation was not needed, the officials say, none of the agencies had a responsibility to tell area schools that the cloud was coming their way--and to advise them to keep students inside and shut off air-conditioning units until it had passed.

The result was confusion.

Guttman said his school called the AQMD after the cloud had fouled the air there and was told that the agency had not yet pinpointed the problem. Later, the grandparent of a student told school officials that the cause was a chemical release from Shell, Guttman said. He said the grandparent had learned of the accident from a daughter who works in Carson.

Garcia-Butler said she heard of the chemical release from a sister in Torrance who told her that students in schools there were being ordered inside. She said she immediately began calling local agencies to determine who in Carson was in charge of ordering similar steps.

Garcia-Butler, who has two children in a Carson elementary school that was not affected by the chemical release, said she never received a definitive answer even though she called a number of agencies including the school district, the AQMD and the county Sheriff’s and Fire departments.

“Everyone pointed me in a different direction,” she said. “There seems to be a (school notification) system if there is an evacuation, but outside of evacuation, there doesn’t seem to be anything.”

Paul Sittel, who heads child welfare, attendance and health services for the Torrance Unified School District, said his district first learned of the Shell release from a parent. Two secretaries were immediately assigned to telephone all the schools in the district and advise them to take precautions.

Sittel said he would welcome improvements in how industry and government agencies relay news of such accidents to the district.

“It would be very helpful to be informed immediately,” he said. “When there are Santa Ana winds, sometimes these releases come our way.”

James Corbett, the assistant county fire chief in charge of the Carson area, acknowledges that in circumstances like the Shell release, it is unclear who is in charge of calling school districts that might be affected. Said Corbett: “I can’t pinpoint the responsible agency.”

Guttman, Garcia-Butler and several officials planning to participate in Tuesday’s meeting say they have no formal plan for resolving the school notification problem.

But one possibility, they say, is to set up a system by which the Los Angeles Unified School District would be notified of any chemical releases. The district would relay news to schools through its radio network.

Garcia-Butler said some type of action has to be taken.

“To me, it seems so simple,” she said. “I’m surprised that we as people not in the system are the ones bringing this to everyone’s attention. It’s surprising that all this wasn’t organized already by people like the Fire Department, City Hall or the AQMD.”