The day this photograph was taken was a

very bad day in North Carolina history.

It doesn't need much explanation as to

why. Massive plumes of smoke

and fire are a pretty good thing for

illustrating this. What we're looking at

here is a chemical plant unexpectedly

self-not

and being on fire.

The year is 2006

and the area is a small town of Apex and

this fire will affect thousands of

people.

Ironically, the company responsible for

the disaster is called the Environmental

Quality Company.

The Godhead does really love a bit of

comical irony in his disasters.

Up to 17,000 people were asked to

evacuate the immediate area to our

disaster, leaving it one of the biggest

cases of such an incident in the state

of North Carolina. In our short

documentary today, we're looking at the

Apex disaster. My name is John and

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Anyway, let's get on with the video.

The town of Apex.

So, this is Apex in North Carolina. It's

a modest town of some 30,000 residents

with a history that goes way back to

1873.

But for today, that's a little bit too

far back in history.

It's a fast-growing town in population

being not too far away from the state

capital of Raleigh.

Much like many towns

and you may know from playing SimCity,

it is divided up into residential,

commercial, and industrial areas.

This part of the town, the one in our

disaster, opened up around 1988 and was

home to a few industrial operations, one

of which was under a company called

Enviro Chem based over a 175

by 100 ft site. Now, depending on the

report, the company either started in

1988 or 1992. But for our story, that's

a bit irrelevant as we're going to fast

forward very quickly 10 years to Enviro

Chem being bought out by this company,

the Environmental Quality Company.

The company in the early 2000s were a

pretty large operation. They dealt with

hazardous waste storage, treating and

processing over 10 sites scattered

across the United States. The site at

Apex was made up of a two-story building

with offices, employee changing rooms, a

chemical laboratory, and non-hazardous

waste processing area, and a one-story

building for the hazardous waste

handling.

It didn't fully process the waste at the

Apex site. Instead, it repackaged it for

transport and proper disposal at another

site.

The waste storage building was pretty

simple in construction with unprotected

steel walls with a steel pitched roof

and did not, vice city in our story,

have a sprinkler system. The building

had six bays with 3-ft wide by 6-in high

curbs to separate five different storage

areas with a truck parking bay as well.

Over the bays is an elevated walkway.

The site normally operated Monday

through to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00

p.m. with a staff complement of around

15

with another 12 people used

as contractors.

The types of materials stored on site

included acids, caustics, lab wastes,

and oxidizers, all of which could catch

fire in the right circumstances, which

obviously EQ wanted to prevent from

happening.

But, as our next section of the video

will discover,

and just like my want for not having a

rusty car bonnet, a want doesn't really

equate to reality.

Oh, and I do actually have a new bonnet

for my car, but I'm just too lazy to fit

it, much to my wife's ongoing

disappointment.

The disaster. It is the evening of the

5th of October, 2006, and the EQ site is

all quiet.

At 9:38 p.m., a passerby driving in

their car along the road near the

facility saw a haze and smelled a strong

chlorine-like smell emanating from the

site. They called 911 to report their

concerns.

The Apex 911 call center dispatched

emergency responders to the area to

investigate. Two fire engines were sent.

This was a normal procedure for such a

call.

The first engine arrived 4 minutes later

at 9:42 p.m. They reported a large vapor

cloud

emanating from the site and requested a

second alarm assignment. The first crews

went to begin an initial reconnaissance

of the area to try and find the source

of the cloud.

Initial searches couldn't find a source,

instead observing smoke emanating from

the storage building and being blown off

site by gentle breeze.

Eventually, they found a sofa-sized fire

in one of the waste bays.

But, this arguably small fire would,

within seconds of discovery, begin

spreading.

The smoke being pushed off site was

heading towards the surrounding

residential community.

Faced with an unfolding chemical

disaster, the fire chief of the

department ordered an evacuation of some

3,300 residences, totaling around 17,000

people. The town's reverse 911 system

was activated. This would contact every

number in any selected area and play a

pre-recorded message. This would tell

them to get out of dodge or do a

barricade in your home job.

At 10:12 p.m., the fire department

recalled all staff both on and off duty

and the volunteer contingent. This was

in total roughly 54 personnel to hand.

As you see in these photos, the fire was

now absolutely immense.

Any available first responders went

door-to-door warning residents of the

disaster.

Over the next half an hour or so, the

firefighters incident command post would

move multiple times to keep out of the

plume of toxic smoke as it was blown

around in the breeze.

The local railway line would also be

shut down as well due to the track

intercepting the plume area.

The firefighters did not attempt to

actually tackle the flames as the

contents of the building was not

completely known. Instead, the plan was

to let it burn and hopefully run out of

fuel. This method was the reason for the

evacuation order. Over the night, the

fire would gradually weaken the building

holding the chemicals.

Throughout the night, the roof of the

building would collapse onto the burning

contents.

By the morning, the fire had burned down

to a more manageable amount, which

allowed the firefighters to start

dousing the fire with water.

The last of the fires was extinguished

by 1:00 a.m. on the 7th of October, and

that was the Saturday. However, although

sans fire, there was another issue for

the site. That was the lovely water that

had been splashing around had mixed with

the chemicals creating a potentially

toxic water runoff.

The EPA would respond to the disaster

and would undertake both ground and

airborne monitoring of the site and

surrounding areas. In addition to EQ

also contracting with a company

specializing in environmental

monitoring.

By a couple of weeks later, the general

consensus was that little to no offsite

contamination was present.

Everyone around Apex

was lucky. Very lucky. Thankfully, there

were no fatalities, which means I can

hit the no one died button. However, 30

civilians sought medical treatment for

respiratory distress and skin

irritation, in addition to 12 police

officers and one firefighter who would

also seek treatment.

The symptoms experienced were reported

to be very similar to exposure to tear

gas.

I should say about the people that were

evacuated, they were only really

evacuated for a few hours as they were

allowed to return to their homes on the

6th of October.

The investigation.

The ones that would dig into the

disaster would be the Chemical Safety

Bureau,

as well as FEMA and the EPA. They would

also do some picking over the instance

for their respective departments. First

of all, I'm going to say that the

definitive start to the fire was never

actually found out. Now, the CSB would

find something in the ruins that had

caused the catastrophic fire before.

Remember the ValuJet crash I covered a

few years ago? Well, these things,

aviation oxidizers, would prove to be a

significant part of the disaster. They

used for the oxygen that you breathe

through when those yellow masks drop

down when you're having a bad day on an

airliner flight.

Well, these things are prone to going

off when exposed to heat due to the

small explosive contained within the

device, which is used to start the

oxygen producing chemical reaction.

Either [snorts] one of these started,

which could have generated more than

enough heat to start a fire,

or another fire source set the oxygen

generators off. But regardless, when we

look at the fire triangle, having oxygen

generators producing oxygen in a fire

situation is only going to make things

worse.

Now, throw into all of that the hundreds

of 55-gallon chemical drums, then you've

got one big old evening building

bonfire.

It will come out that the EQ site didn't

have any kind of fire detection or

suppression in the chemical storage

building.

Let alone any type of barriers to limit

the spread of fire.

Clearly, the EQ site wasn't fit for

purpose, and it would show in a lawsuit

filed against the company, which would

hold a settlement just shy of $8

million. So, that's

So, that's my video on the EQ chemical

disaster in the town of Apex. It's going

to be a one on my scale. This is what

I've got for my root cause analysis

card. Do you agree? Let me know in the

comments below.

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in an extremely hot corner of Southern

London, UK. It's currently 28° here, and

it is 11:00 p.m. at night.

And all that's left to say is thank you

very much for watching. And Mr. Music,

well, Mr. Very sweaty music, can you

play us out, please?

>> Mhm.