On Friday, April 28, 2006 at 2:20 p.m., six companies of Los Angeles firefighters, six LAFD rescue ambulances, two LAFD hazardous materials task forces, one LAFD EMS battalion captain and one LAFD battalion chief officer command team as well as one battalion chief, a hazardous materials squad, and engine companies from the Glendale Fire Department, under the direction of LAFD Battalion Commander Christopher Logan responded to a hazardous materials investigation at 5121 San Fernando Road West in the north Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, bordering the City of Glendale.
Los Angeles firefighters arrived quickly at an industrial firm to discover the calm self-evacuation of personnel after a trio of 55-gallon drums in a covered exterior breezeway between buildings, suddenly discharged their lids, producing voluminous acrid vapors without fire.
Firefighters immediately established a perimeter, as well as an uphill and upwind Command Post and staging location as the building’s former occupants were accounted for and assured to be uninjured.
As a fourth 55-gallon drum discharged its lid, Los Angeles Police and Transportation officials were asked to take charge of bystander and traffic control as additional LAFD resources, including two hazardous materials task forces, arrived at the scene.
According to employees of Huntsman Advanced Materials, their employees had produced the four drums of Araldite®, an epoxy resin, approximately fourteen hours earlier.
After pertinent information was shared with city of Glendale responders, it was determined that LAFD crews would manage the incident, while the Glendale Fire Department addressed any concerns within their nearby jurisdiction.
LAFD Haz-Mat experts utilized sophisticated instruments, including thermal imaging cameras, to determine that portions of the drums exceeded 200 degrees Fahrenheit and had become increasingly unstable while producing sizable and intermittent vapor clouds.
After briefly conferring with Huntsman’s onsite technical staff regarding the atypical product behavior, firefighters chose to construct cardboard enclosures and utilize large amounts of dry ice to cool the drums and render the substance stable.
Their efforts succeeded, and by dusk, with approval and guidance from the County of Los Angeles Fire Department’s Health Hazardous Materials Division, the site was returned to Huntsman staff for remediation and resolution.
There were no civilian or firefighter injuries within the incident sector controlled by the Los Angeles Fire Department, and a precautionary evacuation of a commercial area to the east in the City of Glendale was handled entirely by Glendale authorities.