The potential for a major hazardous material accident clearly exists in Rhode Island. The consequences could be dire without proper planning, training and equipment, according to Chris Harwood's thesis.
Don't worry about a meteorite pulverizing your home and neighborhood, as featured in recent movies. A more realistic threat to Providence is the release of a deadly hazardous material.
Despite federal mandates to prepare for hazardous materials spills caused by accidents or terrorists, Rhode Island cannot adequately protect its citizens and environment, says Chris Harwood, MA '98 and an emergency medical technician with Health Services.
Say, for instance, that at 9 tomorrow morning, a pipe valve at the top of one of the rail cars parked at the Fields Point sewage plant ruptures, oozing some of the liquefied chlorine gas.
In the open air, chlorine gas expands to a toxic cloud nearly 500 times its pressurized volume. Within five minutes on a day with average weather, the bay breeze would carry a long plume of yellowish-green gas toward downtown Providence. It would expose more than 2,500 people in more than 600 households in a 1.2-mile square area to the caustic chlorine fumes at a dose considered immediately dangerous to life and health. And that doesn't include all the people working in offices, warehouses and businesses.
From Route 95's Thurbers Avenue curve to Rhode Island Hospital, people would have 30 minutes to escape the chlorine gas without suffering debilitating symptoms or irreversible health effects. For safety's sake, about 50,000 other people within a seven-mile buffer zone would have to be evacuated. That includes the staff and patients of seven hospitals, including Rhode Island's only Level 1 trauma center. People would not be safe in their office buildings, where outside air completely replaces inside air up to five times an hour. The state's major thoroughfares intersect in Providence where the gas cloud would be hovering; Interstates 95, 195 and U.S. 1 would have to be closed at least temporarily.
Such a major spill would endanger and disrupt lives, send thousands of people to other hospitals and essentially shut down commerce in the state.
The scenario does not have to be so drastic, says Harwood. "The State of Rhode Island is inadequately prepared to battle a major hazardous materials incident," he says, "and if such an event were to occur, there would be grave consequences."
Thesis in state's hands
Harwood reached this conclusion this spring in his environmental studies masters thesis, "Can Rhode Island Effectively Respond to a Major Hazardous Materials Incident?: Deficiencies and Recommendations." The Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency has requested a copy of Harwood's thesis to use in a presentation to the governor's policy council to lobby for the development of a hazardous materials team.
In Massachusetts, it took the worst chemical accident in the state's history and 15 years of work to develop the kind of model regional response team Harwood now recommends for Rhode Island. He's hoping the state won't wait to implement such a program until a predictable incident causes major property damage, injuries and even death.
This thesis was not just an academic exercise. Harwood knows from personal experience that it takes about 15 minutes for emergency response troops to suit up in the Level B suit with respirator and air tanks, which is worn under the Level A fully encapsulated oversuits needed to protect emergency responders from the chlorine.
Before working at Health Services, Harwood worked in Brown's risk management office, where he specialized in biological, chemical and radiological emergencies and safety. Like many of his colleagues, he also works with other emergency response units. He's one of the operations controllers for the Woods Hole-based Coast Guard group, coordinating routine and emergency activities ranging from search and rescue to navigation buoy maintenance. In his Coast Guard role, he puts in extra duty as part of President Clinton's summer security team on Martha's Vineyard. And he volunteers for the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance team.
The grave consequences predicted by Harwood's masters thesis are no secret to people who work on the front lines of the state's emergency response units. Providence seriously lacks response capability for potential accidents, the city's fire department director of hazmat response and training told Harwood. And the expertise and equipment scattered around the state in various emergency units is seriously lacking effective coordination to overcome the obstinate parochial outlook, further jeopardizing fast and effective response, says Donald Westcott, deputy chief of the Naval Education and Training Center's fire department in Newport.
To illustrate the difference a trained team would make, Harwood ran a computer model of a possible disaster. He chose the two rail cars containing about 90 tons of chlorine typically standing by for use when the Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Facility is disinfected. In Harwood's disaster scenario, the eight sensors on each car would have to fail to detect the leak and the Narragansett Bay Commission personnel would have to fail to contain the leak. But focusing on the Fields Point chlorine threat alone would miss the point Harwood is trying to make.
Although the number of facilities using extremely hazardous substances has dropped, the number of hazardous materials incidents occurring in the state has risen. At least 175 facilities in the state are using extremely hazardous substances, according to the state Emergency Management Agency. Hazardous materials are transported by trucks on designated primary routes for hazardous materials: state highways 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 44, 102 and 138, and interstates 95, 195 and 295. In the report, "Assessing Hazardous Material Transportation in Rhode Island," 84 hazardous materials accidents are listed for Providence alone from 1985 to 1994. Accidents happened with gas, oil, cyanide, ammonia and nitric acid.
"The potential for a major hazardous material accident clearly exists in Rhode Island and the consequences could be dire without proper planning, training and equipment," Harwood says.
On the other hand, it might not happen, Harwood is the first to admit. Rhode Island could get lucky and not suffer a major hazardous materials spill. Just as people might put off replacing the battery in a smoke detector knowing that their families probably will not burn to death in the meantime. But who wants to take that kind of risk? Not Harwood.
Rhode Island has at least 61 emergency teams with varying levels of equipment, training and expertise to deal with hazardous materials. If a spill happens, the local fire department is likely to be the first responder. The department will decide its capacity to deal with the emergency and locate additional units with the people and equipment to mitigate the problem. The response team will also need to organize any evacuation. It all takes time, time during which a hazardous situation can rapidly escalate, Massachusetts learned 18 years ago.
Mass. learned the hard way
At 9:05 a.m. on April 3, 1980, tank car TLOX 113009 was being pulled through the railroad switching station in Somerville, Mass., near Joy Street. The tank car was on the final leg of a journey from Monsanto Chemical Company's plant in East St. Louis to another Monsanto plant in Everett. Inside were 13,000 gallons of phosphorus trichloride, used in the manufacture of other chemicals, for textile finishing, electroplating and for making pesticides and gasoline additives.
The switching engine with the chemical tank cars paused while the engineer stopped to throw a switch. A 38-car freight train creeping along an intersecting track sideswiped the tank car, ripping a gash in the half-inch steel skin of the tank car, three inches wide by 20 inches long.
"Something went wrong ... we had a collision," the railroad safety manager told a newspaper reporter.
The Somerville Fire Department sent three engine companies and two ladder companies. The deputy chief took one look at the gray fluids running into storm drains and began to envision toxic fumes coming up from sewer drains from Joy Street to Boston Harbor. Firefighters turned their hoses on the fluid and created a giant cloud of noxious particles, hundreds of feet into the air, drifting toward Boston in the light breeze.
After learning more about the toxic contents of the car, the deputy chief consulted with his dispatcher, who retrieved a hazardous materials handbook and informed him that a strong spray of water directly aimed at the spill could cause an explosion and that the fumes in the gaseous clouds were dangerous. The guide recommended using a fine mist to reduce the vapor, but explicitly precluded direct water spray on a spill. It also called for a dike to contain the spill until removal apparatus was available. Firefighters suited up in hazardous materials gear and began digging a pit to contain the spill.
At 9:30 a.m., Somerville's mayor ordered evacuation of adjacent areas and alerted Boston and Cambridge officials about the growing toxic gas cloud that the wind could carry to their cities. At 10 a.m., area hospitals began implementing disaster plans to prepare for mass casualties.
At 11 a.m., the state fire marshal determined the cloud posed a threat to commuters and transportation and told police to start evacuating people as far as Lechmere Square and to close Route 93 and the Mystic-Tobin Bridge, as well as other smaller transportation routes through Boston.
Shortly after 1 p.m., the leak was contained. About 9,500 gallons had spilled. The wind shifted, and evacuation orders expanded. A layer of mist was being laid over the spill, but the change in wind sent another spray onto the spill, creating another toxic cloud.
By 11:30 p.m., the pit was filled with sand and soda ash, while environmental engineers monitored how much, if any, of the chemical was leeching through soil. By 1 a.m., the estimated 17,000 evacuated people were allowed to return to their homes. At 7:37 a.m., Friday, April 4, the Somerville Fire Department gave the all-clear sign.
The acids formed when the firefighters sprayed water on the liquid phosphorus trichloride are highly corrosive, capable of eating away at many metals and fabrics. Another molecule formed with the acids is a highly toxic gas that was used as a chemical warfare agent in World War I and can cause nausea, convulsions, paralysis, coma and death.
In the end, more than 600 victims were seen at 10 area hospitals. All but a few were released after treatment. At Somerville Hospital, 457 patients exposed to fumes showed a 20 percent liver abnormality rate, suggesting potential liver damage. The incident lasted less than 24 hours, but cost well over $500,000 to Somerville and at least that much to other participating agencies. Somerville's annual city budget was only $47 million. The cost to the city alone required a $4 increase in the tax rate.
Massachusetts learned a lesson in Somerville. As in Rhode Island today, there were limited resources, training and equipment to mitigate a major spill. Since then, Massachusetts has developed a model regional response program composed of six regional teams.
A team for R.I.
Harwood believes Rhode Island's citizens would support the start-up costs for such a team in Rhode Island - a state small enough to require only one team. The start-up costs for the first five years would be $2.3 million, he estimates. If based in Cranston with specially trained and equipped personnel, the team could offer a centralized capability to respond to hazardous materials spills with greater speed and expertise. The team would eventually be self-sustaining through a cost-recovery program - making the responsible party pay for the cleanup.
It would "provide a definite tangible and proactive measure to battle these incidents when they occur, and as shown, would be substantive in diminishing the effect of such incidents," Harwood says. He also makes other recommendations to bring the state in compliance with federal law and to provide resources for planning and mitigation policy development.
In the Fields Point chlorine scenario that Harwood modeled on the computer, such a response team would have reduced the outdoor exposure from more than an hour to 39 minutes, reduced the exposed population from 2,566 to 1,413, and reduced the area affected from 1.2 to 0.9 square miles.