EQ Industrial Services Claims No Chlorine Gas in Apex North Carolina Fire

Date: October 9, 2006

Source: News Room

About 17,000 residents of Apex, North Carolina were evacuated last week because of potential chlorine gas contamination from a hazardous-waste facility fire there. EQ Industrial Services Inc., the company that ran the site, denied the presence of chlorine gas at the site and state monitors have found no sign of elevated levels of chlorine in the air or nearby lakes or streams. A federal Chemical Safety Board report will not be released for several months.

EQ Industrial Services was fined $32,000 in March for six violations by the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, a fine that was almost twice as much as was received by any other hazardous waste facility in North Carolina this year. But the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the company must be inspected four times a month and had passed such an inspection as recently as September 28-29. They also said that the March violations were such as could be, and usually are, remedied quickly.

A similar fire at another of the company's hazardous waste facilities outside Detroit last year forced 2,000 residents to evacuate their homes and sent 32 people to hospitals for treatment. The investigation of that fire is still continuing, and so far no fines or violations have been issued.

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