BY MARA H. GOTTFRIED
Pioneer Press (Minnesota)
Hydrochloric acid leaked Tuesday from a rail car outside a plant east of downtown St. Paul, prompting an evacuation of nearby buildings and forcing six people to go through a hospital decontamination chamber.
The chemical, which causes breathing problems and skin irritations, spilled from a tanker at Hawkins Inc. on Childs Road about 11:40 a.m.
None of the people who underwent decontamination at Regions Hospital were seriously hurt.
The industrial area was evacuated and nearby Warner Road was shut down between U.S. Highway 61 and Sibley Street. Within 45 minutes, the St. Paul Fire Department’s hazardous material team, wearing full body protective suits and breathing tanks, had the leak under control.
“The main thing is no one was seriously injured,” said John Hawkins, chief executive officer of Minneapolis-based Hawkins.
The fire department estimated 5,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid spilled, of which 500 gallons went down a storm drain that leads to the nearby Mississippi River.
“That would have been very quickly diluted to a point that posed no danger,” said Sam Brungardt, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman.
No one outside the immediate area was likely endangered by the chemical, he said.
“Downtown was not at any risk,” Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said.
Paramedics brought one person, a Hawkins employee, to the Regions decontamination center and four others went to the hospital on their own, said Rick Huston, Regions plant operations director. Two people were treated at the scene, Zaccard said.
The Hawkins employee was taken by ambulance as a precautionary measure because he had breathed some fumes, but he was released Tuesday afternoon, Hawkins said. He said he didn’t know if there had been other injuries.
Sixty firefighters were dispatched at the emergency’s peak, Zaccard said. Personnel heading to the command post were told to roll up windows and turn their vehicles’ air conditioning off.
The 20,000-gallon rail car apparently had a leaking valve, but it is unclear what caused it to fail, Zaccard said.
“It was a leak in the car itself, not a leak from the unloading procedure,” Hawkins said.
The decontamination center is in a building adjacent to the St. Paul hospital and has been used on three similar occasions since it opened in 2001, Huston said. When a person is exposed to a chemical, biological or radiological agent, the key is keeping other people or facilities from being contaminated, Huston said.
People who have been exposed put their clothes in a bag, which is destroyed, and their personal belongings in another bag, which officials try to decontaminate, Huston said.
The decontamination process lasts about 10 minutes and involves plenty of water and mild soap, Huston said. People — everyone from the walking wounded to the critically injured — go through a tunnel with four showerheads that spray from different angles, Huston said. By the end of the tunnel, they are considered decontaminated.
Charles Scroggins, who works for General Electric at the nearby Canadian Pacific rail yard, left the area when an alarm was sounded at the rail yard.
“We really didn’t know where it was so we weren’t necessarily concerned,” he said.
In addition to Hawkins, emergency personnel evacuated two other businesses for a total of about 50 people, Zaccard said.
The solution that spilled Tuesday was less than 10 percent hydrochloric acid, Brungardt said.
Hydrochloric acid, which is slightly heavier than air and smells and tastes acidic, could be smelled about a quarter-mile downwind of the spill, Zaccard said. A faint white cloud spread about 50 yards in each direction.
Hawkins provides chemicals to pharmacies, water treatment facilities, food and dairy producers, manufacturers, research labs and other organizations. The company has three terminal facilities in St. Paul that receive, store, distribute and, in some cases, manufacture products.
The hydrochloric acid spilled Tuesday was to be resold by the company and has many uses, including cleaning and water treatment, Hawkins said.
A vapor cloud was seen rising from the location of the spill. It was believed to have come from vapors that drifted into a nearby warehouse and reacted with a product stored there, Brungardt said.
A bigger vapor cloud rose when firefighters poured soda ash, which is sodium carbonate, over the spill to neutralize it, but it was a normal and expected reaction, Zaccard said.
At 1:45 p.m., the air was tested along the terminal and it was deemed safe to breathe, Brungardt said. Warner Road was then re-opened.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has records of three other chemical spills at the Hawkins terminal on Childs Road — 200 gallons of nitric acid in 1991, 50 gallons of sulfuric acid in 1994 and 20 gallons of nitric acid in 1999.