Toxic Spills a Common Foe for Vernon’s Firefighters

For Battalion Chief Arnold De Boer and the tiny Vernon Fire Department, the hazardous-materials spill at the Domtar Gypsum plant, which killed one man Tuesday in a cloud of hydrogen sulfide fumes, was almost routine.

While other departments specialize in fighting house fires, firefighting in Vernon means dealing with dirty, toxic accidents that spring from the endless rows of chemical plants, machine shops and slaughterhouses in the city.

“We respond to something chemical almost daily,” De Boer said as he leaned against one of the fire vehicles at the plant. “When you’re in an industrial area, you’re going to run into it all the time.”

In Vernon, hazardous waste is just a part of life. The city was founded in 1905 with the sole purpose of fostering industry. The city’s motto is an appropriately straight ahead: “Exclusively Industrial.”

The landscape is almost treeless. There are no parks. No movie theaters. No bookstores. There are almost no people--just 152 spread out in 32 housing units, most of which are owned by the city.

In the daytime, the population swells to more than 45,000 as workers flood into the minuscule, five-square-mile city that wraps around the Los Angeles River.

What defines the city are the blocks of jagged industrial plants and the constant roar of machinery and trucks pounding the streets.

According to the U.S. Census, Vernon is the smallest city in the state, in terms of population. But it also one of the richest, having reaped millions in tax dollars through its single-minded pursuit of industrial development. It is, perhaps, one of the only cities in the nation fighting to build a toxic-waste disposal incinerator within its boundaries.

Herman Mojarro, 17, has lived for 15 years just a block outside the city in a tiny pocket of homes hemmed in by a large sandblasting plant, a precision grinding operation and a metal factory.

The ear-splitting hiss from the sandblasting plant goes on all day and he hears sirens four or five times a day, Mojarro said.

“I don’t really notice it,” he said. “I guess I’m used to it.”

Mojarro sometimes worries about the noxious odors that waft through his neighborhood, but mostly he doesn’t think about it.

“It’s OK living here,” he said. “At night, we can have a lot of fun in the streets because no cars come by.”

Mojarro’s mother, Rita, said she deals with the odors and noise by staying indoors during the daytime. “I never go out,” she said, adding that the $400-a-month rent is the main reason the family remains in the area.

Even though they live just two blocks from the gypsum plant, no one in the family had heard of Tuesday’s accident. Even when told of the spill, Mojarro said he was not overly concerned.

The feeling was the same over at Temple Industries, across the street from Domtar Gypsum.

Marco Peralta, a 20-year-old inventory clerk, had no idea that there had been a toxic spill until he went outside for lunch and learned about the accident from reporters.

“We were kind of wondering what was going on,” he said, sipping a can of cola a few hundred feet from the spill site.

Peralta’s co-workers were milling around a catering truck, eating tostadas and watching the commotion across the street. They were worried when told of the death at the plant, but decided that the situation could not have been too serious because there was no evacuation.

“Why bother asking what’s going on?” Peralta asked. “If it was dangerous, they would have sent us home.”

His friends nodded in agreement and headed back to work.