Gene Blair was helping set up tables and food Saturday afternoon at the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department's hall for its annual gun show fundraiser when a white cloud rolled across state Route 268 and up the hillside from the Indspec Chemical Corp. plant.
When the fire hall phone rang at about 5 p.m. with a call from the plant reporting an accidental leak of oleum, a toxic chemical also known as fuming sulfuric acid, Mr. Blair already knew about it.
"We saw it and smelled it. That was the first indication we had," said Mr. Blair, a volunteer firefighter for more than 50 years and captain of the department where his son, David, is chief.
"We had the doors of the hall open and when the white cloud came in, well, the room is 100 feet long and you couldn't see from one end to the other," he said. "We knew. The smell was something we have all the time."
But this was different and much worse. Firefighters from the department blocked off the highway into Petrolia and started going door to door to alert nearby residents to the evacuation that was soon extended to a 3-mile radius, encompassing approximately 2,500 residents in four northeastern Butler County communities.
By 3 a.m. yesterday the air had cleared and the evacuation notice was lifted for Parker, Fairview, Washington and Concord townships. Residents returned to their homes but not before some tense hours during which the company couldn't find the leak and the chemical cloud continued to grow.
"It was thick out here, and they couldn't see," Mr. Blair said. "They had to climb catwalks and feel around on the tank to find the leak."
Although Petrolia fire Chief David Blair initially said the emergency was over shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday, a low-lying cloud containing oleum had not dissipated enough to allow evacuees to return to their homes.
During the evacuation, three people were taken to area hospitals with respiratory problems, but it is not known how serious their conditions were or if they were caused by the chemical cloud.
Motels around Butler were quickly filled and about 200 people went to shelters set up in nearby Karns City, North Washington and Bruin. Some residents elected to stay inside their homes, and many others temporarily stayed with friends and family outside the evacuation zone.
Thomas Coleman, 68, was at his home in Fairview, 11/2 miles west of Petrolia, when a firetruck came up the street and he was told to leave his house.
"I called my daughter who lives nearby, but I thought it was just a drill," said Mr. Coleman, who is a retired chemical plant worker. "But by the time I got to the main street, there was a very dense cloud and an odor, and I really knew I wanted to get out."
He said he spent the night visiting his sister, returning to his home at 5 a.m.
"It was just an inconvenience," he said yesterday afternoon, seated at his regular window booth in Boltz's Uni-Mart, across the street from the Indspec plant. "I wouldn't want it to happen where we'd be evacuated for a week, but for a night it was all right."
It was more than an inconvenience for the fire department, which had to cancel its fundraiser, costing it about $10,000 in lost revenue. Volunteer firefighters met yesterday afternoon to discuss rescheduling the event.
Oleum is used by Indspec to make resorcinol, a chemical compound used in the tire and rubber industries. Indspec is North America's only resorcinol producer. When oleum is spilled as a liquid, it reacts with the water vapor in the air to create a dense cloud that hugs the ground and has a sulfuric smell, like rotten eggs. In high concentrations, it can be deadly and in lesser concentrations, it can irritate and damage the lungs.
The oleum spill occurred at approximately 4:30 p.m. Saturday when the liquid chemical in a 38,000 gallon tank inside the plant overflowed through a vent on the top. The tank is one of five containing oleum at the plant. Alarms were sounded and the 30 employees working at the plant at the time were evacuated. No one was injured.
Dave Dorko, plant manager, said there is no indication of equipment failure and the tank and piping are intact. He said he didn't know how much oleum had spilled.
An investigation and cleanup are continuing, but he said the plant expects to be open and operating normally with a full shift of 160 workers today. He said he doesn't know how long the investigation will take.
Yesterday, Indspec's regular Sunday shift of 30 employees was joined by cleanup crews from McCucheon Enterprises Inc. of Apollo, who wore hazardous materials jumpsuits.
Freda Tarbell, a state Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman, said the department will monitor the cleanup and determine what caused the spill.
"We want to know exactly what happened and how the company responded," said Ms. Tarbell, who indicated the company has not had other spill problems of this magnitude in the past.
The DEP also said that the chemical residue precipitated from the oleum cloud at the plant when workers sprayed it with water drained into storm sewers and into the south branch of Bear Creek, killing fish downstream from the plant for approximately 1,000 yards.
First Published: October 13, 2008, 8:00 a.m.
