Fast Action Quelled Brea Fire’s Aftereffects

John Hogan was in his office on Tuesday watching the industrial inferno on television when he noticed that pools were collecting from the thousands of gallons of water spewing each minute from firefighters’ hoses.

Perturbed, the assistant city engineer worried that the torrents of water could sweep pollutants from the rubber-products factory into drains like those leading to a nearby park, threatening birds and other wildlife.

So, in the fire’s shadow, another battle was launched, the sort of battle fought away from the television cameras at many industrial fires when officials worry that burning rubber or unknown chemicals inside could exude fumes harmful to humans--or that chemicals swept away by water could hurt plants and animals downstream.

Thus, the Esco Rubber Products blaze demanded a team effort, not only by 120 firefighters, but by engineers, environmental workers and wildlife experts armed with maps and sandbags and vacuum trucks.

Concerned about the health effects to nearby residents, firefighters evacuated a building near the scene. “We pulled some elderly folks out the apartment building in the back and the Red Cross took care of them,” said Paul Manrique, a member of the hazardous materials team that responded.

In the end, no injuries were blamed on the fire, firefighters say.

Other workers toiled most of the night tracing the water’s path and building sandbag dams to halt the spread of plant-related contamination into Craig Regional Park in Fullerton. They successfully shielded the park lake, and only one bird was reported soaked in an oil-like substance.

“It’s pretty rare where we have that many contaminants coming downstream,” said Lane Waldner, an Orange County Environmental Management Agency supervisor who got only an hour’s sleep Tuesday night. The remaining hours he spent overseeing the runoff monitoring effort and even laying sandbags to protect the park lake.

“This could have been a lot worse than it was. We worked fairly quickly to contain this spill,” Waldner said.

“Hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated water had to be dealt with,” said Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young, “because it can’t be allowed to go into the ocean or seep into the ground.”

And the thick black smoke from the blaze posed a second worry for those monitoring the fire’s environmental effects.

Burning rubber meant the fire could produce large amounts of hydrocarbon residue, said Young.

“Exposure to even small amounts [of burning hydrocarbons] can create difficulty breathing,” Young said. Most of the firefighters wore a breathing apparatus.

The protocol for fires with potential for environmental damage is fairly straightforward, experts said.

First, deal with human safety. Then, extinguish the fire. “And then immediately move into rehabilitation of the land,” Young said.

Almost simultaneously with the formulation of the plan to battle a blaze, hazardous materials experts begin plotting how to deal with polluted water or other materials.

Moments after the first units arrived to battle the Esco blaze, the owner of the business told the Brea fire battalion chief that the rubber was not an exotic compound but an ordinary material of the type used to make plunger heads and gaskets, said Manrique.

The battalion chief and hazardous materials experts then reviewed the material safety data sheets that are required by federal law to accompany most chemical compounds, Manrique said. In these documents, manufacturers detail the chemical composition, health risks, known side effects and how to treat exposures.

The data sheets for the plant showed that of nearly 30 chemicals reported for the plant, only two had ratings high on the hazard scale: a highly flammable resin and a methylene compound. It is not known if those chemicals were stored in the plant at the time of the fire, officials said. The inventory also listed thousands of pounds of rubber.

Typically, Manrique said, “you get skin irritations, rashes and itching” from rubber fires, “and we had a few people who were starting to feel uncomfortable.”

Although none of the firefighters in Brea were treated for injuries caused by the specific substances burning in the fire, a crew from Fullerton was sent to the hospital “as a precaution,” said Battalion Fire Chief Dan Chidester from Fullerton.

“We had some guys get a lot of smoke and we sent them to the hospital,” said Chidester. “But they’re fine and are all back at work today.”

A decontamination site was set up near the fire site where firefighters could be hosed down.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District was not called to the fire Tuesday night, and the fire was extinguished by the time an AQMD monitoring unit arrived Wednesday, a spokesman said.

Those familiar with industrial fires are all too aware of a second threat--the water runoff.

“We’re very aware of the threat to the habitat and downstream fisheries, so we try to jump on that early,” said Brea Fire Chief Bill Simpkins.

The water was allowed to migrate through the maze of underground cement pipes from Brea to an open drainage area near Craig Regional Park, said Waldner at EMA.

Waldner said that when he arrived at the scene, he immediately began tracing the likely path of the discharge through maps of Brea’s and the county’s underground sewers.

Waldner said officials began looking for an open area large enough to collect the water and found one a mile and a half downstream near Craig park.

There, crews quickly erected bypass dams to prevent the water from flowing elsewhere and spreading pollutants.

They used a three-pronged process--blocking the flow, soaking up possible contaminants with absorbent pads and pumping it out with hoses from special vacuum trucks.

Cleanup workers washing down the storm drains found burnt rubber, some oily substances, ashes and other debris, said a supervisor with Advanced Cleanup Technologies Inc. of Carson, a firm involved in the mop-up work.

Waldner, who has been responding to environmental hazards for 15 years, said the county is testing the water to determine its contents and level of pollution.

“There was a definite visual difference in the water,” Waldner said. “You could see the discoloration from the runoff.”

Two licensed hazardous material cleanup firms are pumping it out of the drainage area, and will also test it to see how to appropriately dispose of it, Waldner said.

Some initial water testing done Wednesday hinted that the lake escaped measurable harm.

The acidity level of the water entering the lake was neutral, suggesting that it did not contain acid chemicals from the fire, said Christine Hanson, EMA environmental specialist.

The entering water was low in oxygen, indicating “there were a lot of substances in the runoff” that were using up oxygen, but an oxygen reading at the lake’s center was normal, she said.

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