APEX, N.C.-
As many as 17,000 residents were asked to evacuate early Friday as firefighters waited for daylight to battle a hazardous materials fire that shot flames some 150 feet into the sky.
Hospital officials said 18 people were sent to emergency rooms after the blaze that began late Thursday in this suburban Raleigh town.
Town manager Bruce Radford said he didn’t know what sparked the fire, which started around 10 p.m. at Environmental Quality Co.
When he arrived at the scene, Radford said, a chlorine cloud rose 50 feet in the air and flames shot three times as high. He estimated there were 20 to 30 explosions inside the plant.
The fire jumped the chemical plant site and appeared to have burned four petroleum tanks belonging to another company, said Mayor Keith Weatherly. That likely accounted for the explosions, he said.
Hours after asking almost half the town’s resident to evacuate, officials ordered additional evacuations for several hundred more homes when a plume of smoke and chemicals moved. Residents as far as 2 miles away could see the plume or smell the chemicals, officials said.
Radford said firefighters had to wait for daybreak to examine the blaze at Environmental Quality, a hazardous waste business that housed a variety of volatile chemicals, including chlorine.
A yellow haze lingered over downtown and there was a faint smell of chlorine in the air. Police lined up along the main street that runs through the town’s business district, blocking both ends of the road. Officials said Apex’s downtown and schools would be closed Friday.
“People are going to want to come in and sight-see at this fire scene,” Radford said. “They will either get terribly sick or they will be arrested. No questions asked.”
Of the 18 people hospitalized, eight were law enforcement officers and one is a firefighter who complained of nausea and respiratory problems.
Nine other residents were being treated for “respiratory distress,” said WakeMed spokeswoman Heather Monackey.
And about 100 elderly residents were evacuated from a nursing home in Apex and were sheltered in nearby hospitals.
Robert Doyle, an Environmental Quality spokesman at the company’s headquarters outside Detroit, said an emergency response team was being mobilized to help with the clean up. He said about 25 employees work at the Apex plant and all had left the building by 7 p.m.
Doyle said the facility handles a wide array of industrial waste–ranging from paints to solvents.
“Because of the many different types of waste that we bring in, it’s very difficult to determine the cause of the fire,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Mike Baker and Martha Waggoner contributed to this report from Raleigh.
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