Title: Cancer is a major concern for all Emergency respon - Print this page
Posted By: Webmaster Date Posted: May 28 2009
Category: National Headlines
The attached article is intended to help you understand that volunteer
responders are exposed to many toxic materials in the course of their normal
firefighting duties. Some legislators have indicated that volunteers don't
respond to that many fires. Well as you can see from the attached article,
many of our volunteers are in fact responding to toxic situations, not only
in residential and apartment fires, but in the various commercial fires they
respond to every day.
The attached article about a refinery fire in the Sunoco Refinery (part in
Delaware County and part in Delaware State) is an excellent example as the
non refinery emergency responders are all volunteers from Pennsylvania and
Delaware. Many of our volunteer responders respond to hundreds of alarms
each year, maybe not in a very rural area, but in many, many areas of
Pennsylvania and involve toxic exposure.
Remember, it’s the exposures that cause cancer, not the number of alarms or
whether you are paid or volunteer. Cancer is a major concern for all
Emergency responders, fire or EMS, volunteer or paid.
Tom Savage
Executive Director
PFESI
Posted on Mon, May. 18, 2009
Explosion rocks Sunoco chemical refinery; evacuations averted
By Bob Fernandez and Kathleen Brady-Shea
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
A massive explosion rocked the Sunoco refinery in Claymont, Del. late last
night, sending flames shooting into the sky and initially raising concerns
about residents' safety in Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Jersey. Shortly
before midnight, a company official said Sunoco and local fire officials
were fighting the blaze and that no injuries had been reported.
Although there had been early talk of possible evacuations, none took
place because any possible harmful ingredient of the chemical that was released
into the air - ethylene - burned off, said Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh, a spokesman
for Delaware State Police. By 1:30 this morning, the fire was contained
but still burning."
"We're very fortunate and grateful there were no injuries," said Thomas
Golembeski, a spokesman for Sunoco, at what was a chaotic scene at the
Claymont facility of Sunoco emergency response officials, local firefighters and
harried residents.
Residents reported hearing one or two explosions that rattled car and
house windows at about 10:15 p.m. Flames could be seen as far away as
Philadelphia International Airport.
"All I know is that there are a million pipes down there and I did not
want to wait for another explosion," said Debbie Collison, a resident of nearby
Linwood who could see the flames from a window in her home. She fled that
house in a car with her son, his girlfriend, a next-door neighbor, two cats
and a dog. She described the explosion as a "ba-boom."
Collison and a union official said there had not been an explosion like
this for a long time, perhaps decades, in the heavily industrialized area.
Police blocked off roads around the bi-state refinery, one of the largest
in the Northeast in a heavily populated area just off I-95. It is major
producer of gasoline and chemicals.
There was initial confusion about the origin of the explosion, but it
appeared that it took place in a small part of the refinery in Claymont Del.,
just south of the main refinery in Marcus Hook, Delaware County. There were
also mixed reports over what type of chemical was airborne.
TV initially reported the chemical in the explosion as ethylene oxide, a
toxic material used in auto antifreeze. A Sunoco official later identified
the chemical as ethylene, a byproduct of oil refining used to manufacture
plastics.
Sunoco officials did not have an official cause of the fire. The explosion
came three days after Pennsylvania fined the Marcus Hook refinery $762,150
in civil penalties for air-quality permit violations.
"Sunoco emitted nearly twice the permitted limit of particulate matter and
an average of four times the permitted level of ammonia from a unit at this
facility for more than one year," Environmental Protection Southeast
Regional Director Joseph A. Feola said in a statement. "We take these
violations
very seriously, and are working with Sunoco to correct the problems."
The problems were discovered in tests done by Sunoco in 2006.
