<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Residents fled when mysterious vapors spread over a square mile of Apex, N.C. &amp;amp;gt;   The fire that tore through a hazardous waste facility in Apex, N.C., was so dangerous that the fire department just let it burn. (Photograph by Chris Seward/Raleigh News and Observer/WPN) On the evening of Oct. 5, 2006, Jack Lewis was sprawled on a couch with his bulldog, watching the Tigers beat the Yankees in the playoffs. There&amp;#039;s not much else for the police chief of Apex, N.C., to do on a typical Thursday night. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s usually a quiet, safe town,&amp;quot; Lewis says. Then, at about 10 pm, a series of rapid-fire explosions from a nearby hazardous waste facility rocked the Raleigh suburb, sending Lewis and his colleagues into action. A chemical cloud rose from the site and, fanned by the wind, engulfed the neighborhood to the west. &amp;quot;The whole valley was covered in fog,&amp;quot; says Mark Haraway, the town&amp;#039;s fire chief. &amp;quot;It was white, and maybe 30 or 40 ft. high.&amp;quot; The facility, one of 11 operated by the Environmental Quality Co. (EQ), consolidated waste materials into 55-gal. drums and 1-cu.-yard plastic &amp;quot;totes,&amp;quot; and stored the containers until they were transferred to disposal and recycling plants. As the flames spread, a site manager re-portedly told responders that the building might contain pesticides, herbicides, sulfurs and paints. But, remarkably, no one at EQ could confirm what chemicals were burning. Firefighters soon heard the drums popping open in the heat -- more than three dozen explosions in 4 hours. Quick action by Lewis and local fire officials helped prevent deaths and limit damage. Nonetheless, the blaze highlighted the risks posed by the nation&amp;#039;s hundreds of similar sites, and raised concerns about the lack of national standards for dealing with toxic fires. Lewis asked the Federal Aviation Administration to close local airspace, and ordered the evacuation of about 7000 residents in the cloud&amp;#039;s path. At first, firefighters didn&amp;#039;t fight the blaze, which could have exposed them to deadly gases and, ironically, spread the contamination farther. Instead, they focused on containment. Three hundred firefighters from four counties responded, many helping to build a dirt berm around the fire, to prevent chemical runoff down the sloping land and the spread of the 10-story flames. &amp;quot;The emergency response was appropriate and efficient,&amp;quot; says Robert Hall, the lead investigator for the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB). By 3 am, shifting winds had helped spread the cloud, and Lewis expanded the evacuation order to 10,000 more residents. A downpour then provided some relief, washing acids from the air. The acids &amp;quot;get into the water supply, but become diluted quickly,&amp;quot; says William Grosshandler, fire re-search chief at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. By midday Friday, the flames had subsided enough to allow Haraway&amp;#039;s team to attack the blaze, aided by an industrial fire company. They used an aqueous film-forming foam to prevent chemical runoff and suppress vapors. The origin of the fire may never be known with certainty. &amp;quot;The building is essentially destroyed, so there&amp;#039;s really no evidence,&amp;quot; Hall says. However, his team concluded that it probably began in a part of the facility where oxidizers, such as pool chlorination tablets, were kept. The likely cause: improper mixing of chemicals. In March 2006, the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources fined the company $32,000 -- a large figure by the state&amp;#039;s standards. The violations included storing incompatible chemicals together and failing to enact the proper contingency plan during a hazardous waste release. (EQ also faces an investigation into an explosion that occurred in the summer of 2005 in a Michigan facility -- one that may have followed the improper mixing of chemicals.) &amp;quot;We welcome any regulatory agency&amp;#039;s input, and plan to work closely with investigating agencies,&amp;quot; says EQ spokesman Robert Doyle. The Apex incident highlights the lack of a national fire code to govern waste transfer sites. &amp;quot;The fire raises a number of questions, including whether better fire detection, protection, firewalls and separation measures could improve the safety of hazardous waste facilities -- especially those close to residential neighborhoods,&amp;quot; says CSB head Carolyn W. Merritt. And, she continues, local officials need accurate information on what is stored in these facilities. In Apex, an air and water sampling by federal and state environmental agencies revealed no hazardous levels of contamination. Residents began returning home on Oct. 7. By then, Haraway says, &amp;quot;the building looked like a molten pile of metal.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a1141/4206282/>