By Michael V. Hannigan
It will be most of the day before officials will decide whether or not to lift the evacuation zone in Athens, Fire Chef John McQueary said at a press conference Friday morning.
A fire Thursday evening at the ammonium nitrate storage facility operated by East Texas Ag Services caused officials to set up an evacuation zone in approximately a five block radius. The storage building is located at 105 Larkin Street, just off the square in Athens.
Friday, McQueary said two agencies — the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) — monitored the air in Athens through the night and into the morning. The chief said they found “little to no toxicity” in the air.
“At this time, even though we don’t have toxicity, we still have smoke; we still have carbon products coming from that as you would any structure fire,” McQueary said. “So because of that, we are not going to remove people from the Cain Center (shelter) to go back to their residences because of the health issue.”
McQueary said Athens firefighters along with state and federal officials came up with a plan for the fire today. It includes:
– Tearing down the remaining walls of the building to keep them from collapsing inside the hot zone
— Using water to try and create steam and water coolant that will help get rid of the smoke
— Build dikes to contain any overflow and spillage of water that might be contaminated; dikes will also block the sewer system to stop overflow from going into that system
“That is our plan,” said McQueary. “To cool it and provide steam conversion so we can resolve this in a lot quicker fashion.”
Unfortunately, even that will take time.
“We are looking at anywhere between six to eight hours before we’re able to relook and evaluate the situation to see if the smoke is dissipating and is not going to crop back up again,” said McQueary.
The site of the fire is being treated as a crime scene at this time because the fire began so quickly, according to the fire chief. He said the owner of Ag Services was on the site at 5:15 p.m. and when fire fighters arrived just 30 minutes later the blaze was already out each wall and through the roof of the building, which he said was suspicious.
If its bad enough to keep the evacuation in place and have road blocks, I do not understand why businesses less than a block from the road blocks are working today. If the smoke and such is a health risk in the designated radius, how doe it not affect those outside of it?