Kanawha-Putnam Emergency Management Plan

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Institute Volunteer Fire Chief Andre Higginbotham headed for Bayer CropScience just minutes after the calls starting pouring in to emergency officials about the Aug. 28 explosion and fire at the company's plant.

Under the local emergency plan, Higginbotham would be the incident commander outside the plant. He would decide if nearby towns should be evacuated or if residents should take shelter in their homes.

At about 10:45 p.m., 20 minutes after the blast, Higginbotham told emergency dispatchers he was talking to plant officials and would report back with more information.

"Let us find out what we've got," Higginbotham said, according to emergency radio recordings. "I'll try to give you something in a second."

Six minutes later, Higginbotham reported back. He told dispatchers, "We do have an explosion and a working fire," but gave no further details.

Metro 911 asked for more. "I can't get any information," Higginbotham said. "Stand by. I'm trying to get some information right now."

The additional information didn't come any time soon.

County emergency officials didn't learn for sure until 90 minutes after the explosion where the blast occurred inside the plant, and what toxic chemicals might have been released.

Bayer's refusal to provide information appears to have triggered a series of other problems that hampered response efforts and delayed for more than an hour a warning that residents should take shelter in their homes.

"It was mass chaos," said Joe Crawford, police chief of St. Albans, a city of more than 11,000 located just across the Kanawha River from the plant

Newly released emergency radio recordings, command center reports and public statements by responders all paint a frightening picture of the 3 1/2 hours following the explosion.

Local firefighters and police didn't know what to do. Some were preparing to copy evacuation plans, fearing a catastrophic leak that threatened thousands of lives. Others were scrambling to figure out which roads to close down and at which intersections.

"That information needs to be relayed to Metro so we know what to do to protect our citizens," said Dunbar Mayor Roger Wolfe. "We're a community and it takes everybody working together."

Authorities resorted to all sorts of back-channel communications. They tried to call plant workers and retirees. They reached out to local industry experts, even asked the media for whatever rumors were out there.

Decisions about where emergency personnel should stage were made based on smells and visible observations, not on chemical monitoring results or computer modeling data available to officials inside the Bayer plant.

County officials ended up with command centers set up at three different locations - four, if you count the Metro 911 Operations Center. It wasn't clear who was in charge.

One worker was killed and another seriously injured in the explosion and fire. Thousands of area residents were advised to take shelter in their homes.

No injuries or illnesses outside the plant have been confirmed, but the incident was the worst Kanawha Valley chemical plant accident in more than a decade. And given the location of toxic methyl isocyanate storage tanks near the blast site, it could have been much worse, according state Department of Environmental Protection officials.

A federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the explosion could take six months. A broader probe by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board could take more than a year.

But local residents remain concerned about why it took Bayer so long to explain what was happening the night of Aug. 28 and why emergency responders did not warn residents sooner to take shelter in their homes.

"There's no excuse for that," said St. Albans Fire Chief Steve Parsons. "It's unacceptable."

This isn't the first time residents have raised such complaints. And the Kanawha Valley has a detailed response plan, written to comply with federal chemical emergency laws. Congress mandated such plans after a Union Carbide leak in Bhopal, India, killed thousands of people and a smaller release at Carbide's sister plant in Institute injured 135.

Here's how it's supposed to work:

Inside the facility, the plant's in-house fire chief is the on-site incident commander. Outside the facility, the local fire chief is in charge. The two are supposed to work closely together. They manage the response and make decisions about whether communities should be evacuated or advised to stay in their homes.

At the Metro 911 Operations Center, located along U.S. 119 south of Southridge Center, county emergency officials and dispatchers help to dispatch needed resources to the scene.

Fire departments stand by to help. Police officers help block off roads. Ambulance crews prepare to treat and transport anyone who was injured. Poison Center officials pull details on the chemicals that might have been released.

The incident commander is supposed to appoint one or more public information officers to provide needed details to the media and area residents.

But during the Aug. 28 incident, whatever detailed information the incident commander was getting from Bayer was never passed on. And no one involved bothered to appoint someone to communicate with the media and the public.

At about 11:06 p.m., Higginbotham told dispatchers that there was no need for a shelter-in-place advisory. But he didn't say much more.

Later, Higginbotham - a Bayer CropScience employee - recalled that plant officials told him the explosion "had not compromised" any major chemical tanks. He added that he didn't smell anything dangerous. "I felt like at that time it was safe," Higginbotham said.

Metro 911 dispatchers repeated Higginbotham's orders that no shelter-in-place advisory be issued at 11:09 p.m. and again at 11:15 p.m., reports show.

About three minutes later, St. Albans police officers across the river reported hearing a secondary explosion.

Meanwhile, the phones were still ringing off the hook at the Metro 911 center. Dispatchers handled 2,800 calls in four hours, said center director Carolyn Charnock.

Repeatedly over the course of several hours, dispatchers called the plant to ask for details about what had happened. Each time, they got through only to a guard at the plant gate, who said he was only allowed to say that there was an emergency situation ongoing.

Kanawha-Putnam Emergency Management Plan

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Institute Volunteer Fire Chief Andre Higginbotham headed for Bayer CropScience just minutes after the calls starting pouring in to emergency officials about the Aug. 28 explosion and fire at the company's plant.

Under the local emergency plan, Higginbotham would be the incident commander outside the plant. He would decide if nearby towns should be evacuated or if residents should take shelter in their homes.

At about 10:45 p.m., 20 minutes after the blast, Higginbotham told emergency dispatchers he was talking to plant officials and would report back with more information.

"Let us find out what we've got," Higginbotham said, according to emergency radio recordings. "I'll try to give you something in a second."

Six minutes later, Higginbotham reported back. He told dispatchers, "We do have an explosion and a working fire," but gave no further details.

Metro 911 asked for more. "I can't get any information," Higginbotham said. "Stand by. I'm trying to get some information right now."

The additional information didn't come any time soon.

County emergency officials didn't learn for sure until 90 minutes after the explosion where the blast occurred inside the plant, and what toxic chemicals might have been released.

Bayer's refusal to provide information appears to have triggered a series of other problems that hampered response efforts and delayed for more than an hour a warning that residents should take shelter in their homes.

"It was mass chaos," said Joe Crawford, police chief of St. Albans, a city of more than 11,000 located just across the Kanawha River from the plant

Newly released emergency radio recordings, command center reports and public statements by responders all paint a frightening picture of the 3 1/2 hours following the explosion.

Local firefighters and police didn't know what to do. Some were preparing to copy evacuation plans, fearing a catastrophic leak that threatened thousands of lives. Others were scrambling to figure out which roads to close down and at which intersections.

"That information needs to be relayed to Metro so we know what to do to protect our citizens," said Dunbar Mayor Roger Wolfe. "We're a community and it takes everybody working together."

Authorities resorted to all sorts of back-channel communications. They tried to call plant workers and retirees. They reached out to local industry experts, even asked the media for whatever rumors were out there.

Decisions about where emergency personnel should stage were made based on smells and visible observations, not on chemical monitoring results or computer modeling data available to officials inside the Bayer plant.

County officials ended up with command centers set up at three different locations - four, if you count the Metro 911 Operations Center. It wasn't clear who was in charge.

One worker was killed and another seriously injured in the explosion and fire. Thousands of area residents were advised to take shelter in their homes.

No injuries or illnesses outside the plant have been confirmed, but the incident was the worst Kanawha Valley chemical plant accident in more than a decade. And given the location of toxic methyl isocyanate storage tanks near the blast site, it could have been much worse, according state Department of Environmental Protection officials.

A federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the explosion could take six months. A broader probe by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board could take more than a year.

But local residents remain concerned about why it took Bayer so long to explain what was happening the night of Aug. 28 and why emergency responders did not warn residents sooner to take shelter in their homes.

"There's no excuse for that," said St. Albans Fire Chief Steve Parsons. "It's unacceptable."

This isn't the first time residents have raised such complaints. And the Kanawha Valley has a detailed response plan, written to comply with federal chemical emergency laws. Congress mandated such plans after a Union Carbide leak in Bhopal, India, killed thousands of people and a smaller release at Carbide's sister plant in Institute injured 135.

Here's how it's supposed to work:

Inside the facility, the plant's in-house fire chief is the on-site incident commander. Outside the facility, the local fire chief is in charge. The two are supposed to work closely together. They manage the response and make decisions about whether communities should be evacuated or advised to stay in their homes.

At the Metro 911 Operations Center, located along U.S. 119 south of Southridge Center, county emergency officials and dispatchers help to dispatch needed resources to the scene.

Fire departments stand by to help. Police officers help block off roads. Ambulance crews prepare to treat and transport anyone who was injured. Poison Center officials pull details on the chemicals that might have been released.

The incident commander is supposed to appoint one or more public information officers to provide needed details to the media and area residents.

But during the Aug. 28 incident, whatever detailed information the incident commander was getting from Bayer was never passed on. And no one involved bothered to appoint someone to communicate with the media and the public.

At about 11:06 p.m., Higginbotham told dispatchers that there was no need for a shelter-in-place advisory. But he didn't say much more.

Later, Higginbotham - a Bayer CropScience employee - recalled that plant officials told him the explosion "had not compromised" any major chemical tanks. He added that he didn't smell anything dangerous. "I felt like at that time it was safe," Higginbotham said.

Metro 911 dispatchers repeated Higginbotham's orders that no shelter-in-place advisory be issued at 11:09 p.m. and again at 11:15 p.m., reports show.

About three minutes later, St. Albans police officers across the river reported hearing a secondary explosion.

Meanwhile, the phones were still ringing off the hook at the Metro 911 center. Dispatchers handled 2,800 calls in four hours, said center director Carolyn Charnock.

Repeatedly over the course of several hours, dispatchers called the plant to ask for details about what had happened. Each time, they got through only to a guard at the plant gate, who said he was only allowed to say that there was an emergency situation ongoing.

At some point, officials from the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department and the state Fire Marshal's office got into the plant. But plant officials hustled them into a small side room and gave them little information.

"We're having a little problem with communications inside the plant to know exactly what we have," Fire Marshal Sterling Lewis said in an 11:20 p.m. call to Metro.

Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford also had deputies stationed outside the plant gate.

The father of one deputy had retired from the plant, and was able to give officials the cell phone number of a current plant employee. Rutherford began getting information from that employee, but was not able to confirm it with company officials.

"The biggest obstacle for everybody was, 'What the heck is going on?'" Rutherford said. "For the longest time, they wouldn't even confirm that there was an explosion at the plant."

Deputies outside the plant were smelling and watching for a chemical cloud. When they thought they saw something, Rutherford on his own authority moved his officers from the plant gate area back to nearby Shawnee Park.

"I'm not going to put my people in danger," Rutherford said.

But the move essentially created another command center. There was already one inside the plant, and one just outside the Bayer gate.

C.W. Sigmon, retired South Charleston fire chief, said that duplicate command centers have been a problem before during chemical accidents.

"If you have three command posts, you must have three incidents," Sigmon said. "We've got to have one command center. We've got to correct that problem."

A week after the Aug. 28 incident, Bayer officials declined to attend a community meeting sponsored by the local citizen group People Concerned About MIC.

Plant spokesman Tom Dover and safety officer Mike Wey did attend last week's emergency response de-briefing. But they said little.

Pushed for answers, Wey told emergency responders, "We will make improvements. We will do our best to get better information out."

Later in the day, Bayer issued a news release through the Charles Ryan Associates public relations firm. It said that company officials "fully recognize our critical role in the emergency communications process" and are "incorporating improvements to ensure prompt communications with public safety officials in emergency situations."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 348-1702.

Bayer explosion emergency response partial timeline Aug. 28-29, 2008

10:25 p.m.:

An explosion occurs in a 4,000-gallon cylindrical tank in a portion of the Bayer CorpScience plant in Institute known as the West Carbamoylation Center, where the company makes the carbamate pesticides, including Larvin. The tank was used to gather waste products from Larvin production, before they were cleaned and piped to the plant's powerhouse to generate electricity for the facility.

10:30 p.m.:

Residents begin flooding the Metro 911 Center with phone calls, reporting that the explosion shook homes, rattled windows and sent a fireball more than 100 feet into the air.

10:45 p.m.:

Incident commander Andrew Higginbotham, chief of the Institute Volunteer Fire Department, tells emergency dispatchers he is talking with plant officials and will report back with more information.

10:51 p.m.:

Higginbotham confirms an explosion and a working fire, but does not say where in the plant the incident occurred or what chemicals could have been released.

11:07 p.m.:

Metro dispatchers announce there is no shelter-in-place advisory, per instructions from Higginbotham. This announcement is repeated at 11:10 and again at 11:15.

11:19 p.m.:

St. Albans emergency responders report hearing a secondary explosion at the plant.

11:24 p.m.:

Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford confirms that there is a "small leak" of an unknown material.

11:33 p.m.:

A shelter-in-place advisory is issued for areas around the plant,

by order of Dale Petry, Kanawha County's emergency services director.

2:09 a.m.: Shelter-in-place advisory is lifted.

Sources: Metro 911 calls, emergency radio recordings