By David Hench
The Portland Press Herald
WESTBROOK, Maine — Dozens of firefighters, many wearing fully-enclosed hazardous materials suits, swarmed the Namco facility on Larrabee Road Sunday after 50 to 60 gallons of toxic pool chemicals spilled.
Workers discovered the spill in a storeroom at about 9:40 a.m. A stack of five-gallon containers of sodium hypochlorite, a pool treating chemical, had toppled, many of them rupturing and leaking their contents, said Public Safety Director Michael Pardue.
The handful of employees in the business evacuated the building, as did workers in the nearby Sherwin Williams paint store and Advance Auto Parts. Nobody was hurt.
The first entry teams, wearing green, Class B hazmat suits, assessed the spill and made sure the chemicals were not reacting with other substances in the warehouse, said Pardue.
Namco, a pool supply company, had technical information about the chemical. In high concentrations it can release a toxic vapor and the liquid is harmful to touch. The company also had neutralizer on site to clean it up, fire officials said.
Firefighters spent almost six hours neutralizing the spill before allowing workers to return at 4 p.m. The incident drew crews from Westbrook, Gorham, Grey, Scarborough, Standish and Windham, many of them members of the Presumpscot Valley Hazardous Materials Team. Portland’s hazardous materials team also responded.
Sunday’s hot temperatures forced firefighters to take breaks and required more personnel taking turns entering the building, and staff conducting medical evaluations and decontamination when they came out.
''A hazmat incident is labor intensive anyways,’' said Deputy Chief Wayne Jones. ''With the heat, we were trying to keep from having heat exhaustion with our crews. They’d come out and we’d get them cooled down and debriefed on the information they had from being in the warehouse where the chemical was, then plan for the next entry.’'
''Presumpscot Valley was the initial response team and then Portland came in to assist as we needed more manpower later in the incident,’' Jones said.
Crews used soda ash to neutralize the spilled chemicals, making repeated applications before it was clear enough for specialized cleanup crews to remove the spill.
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