By Toby Coleman
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Copyright 2006 The News and Observer

Firefighters across the state have little idea what is inside commercial hazardous waste facilities such as the one that exploded this month in Apex.

Apex officials speaking Tuesday before a new task force studying hazardous waste regulations said that needs to change.

"Please understand, three weeks ago on Thursday we did not prepare to go to bed and become the poster child for hazardous waste in North Carolina, but that's what happened," said Apex Town Manager Bruce Radford. "I do feel as though we have a need for some legislation that would require a full and complete accounting of those materials as quickly as it can be achieved."

Apex Fire Chief Mark Haraway said that firefighters responding to the chemical blaze Oct. 5 knew little about what was burning until a representative of the warehouse owner, EQ Industrial Services, arrived.

Even then, Haraway said, he had only a vague idea of what could be billowing over Apex. The EQ representative could describe the contents of the warehouse only in generalities, Haraway said. EQ Industrial Services did not turn over an inventory until Oct. 9.

An EQ spokesman said the fire kept the company's workers from getting into the office where the inventory was kept. The company is considering storing copies of its inventory documents off-site to prevent similar problems from recurring, the spokesman said.

Haraway said the lack of detail on the night of the explosion forced him and other emergency responders to presume the worst. Over the next few hours, town officials evacuated a large swath of town and told residents that the smoke could be fatally toxic.

Once the smoke cleared, the fire was not as bad as the worst-case scenario. Nobody died, and about 30 people went to the hospital complaining of respiratory problems.

But the incident created vast concern about the other 10 commercial hazardous waste facilities in the state. They include a solvent recycling plant near a church on Old Stage Road south of Raleigh and a hazardous waste depot across the street from a day-care center in Creedmoor, 16 miles northeast of Durham in Granville County.

So last week, Gov. Mike Easley created an 11-person task force to refine hazardous waste regulations to ensure that the people around these facilities know what is inside of them.

The task force met for the first time Tuesday afternoon, just as EQ finished clearing the debris of its charred warehouse from its Apex site. The company has told state regulators that it would scrap the metal and send the waste to landfills and other disposal facilities in Michigan, Ohio and Canada.

The task force's main job will be to figure out how the state could close loopholes that exempt facilities such as EQ's Apex warehouse from requirements that force other companies to publicly list all the hazardous waste on their properties.

Easley has asked the group to give him recommendations by mid-December.