PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — As a smoke plume billowing from a massive warehouse fire diminishes in size, local leaders say they’re feeling more confident about the city’s air quality.
“It’s been a work in progress but every day they’ve continued to knock down this fire,” Wood County Commission President Blair Couch said this morning on MetroNews’ “Talkline.”
This morning there was significant but still less smoke flowing from the old, 10-acre Ames plant that caught fire on Saturday. Local officials provided an 11 a.m. update today to media and citizens.
“The good news is, we’ve found decreasing levels of particulate matter in the air since we started,” said Paul Nony, a toxicologist for Center for Toxicology & Environmental Health, during today’s news conference.
“We have found very, very low or non-detectable levels of other chemicals that could be in the smoke out in the community.”
He added that people are still noticing odors from the smoke, sometimes from miles away. He said that is likely to continue as long as the fire burns and depending on weather conditions.
“People can smell these compounds at very, very low levels that don’t represent a toxic level but it’s certainly noticeable through the odor,” he said.
The company has been continuously monitoring the air around the plant and in the community since Monday afternoon.
“The real danger, if there is any, is for long-term exposure,” Nony said. “We’re actually comparing the smoke levels for this particular matter to wildfire guidelines.
“Wildfires, surprisingly enough are very similar to what we see here. Wildfires consume homes, they consume buildings with a lot of the same materials you would find in this type of plant fire, so they are very applicable.”
He went on to say, “This is a short-term event. We’re talking a matter of days here. We wouldn’t expect that any effects that people have seen so far to be representative of any long-term symptoms.”
Day 5 update on #Parkersburgfire in West Virginia https://t.co/7Z9fNSPB9A
— Brad McElhinny (@BradMcElhinny) October 25, 2017
Contractors, with the help of volunteer fire departments from all over the area, were using heavy equipment to move aside debris to get to the layers of material on fire.
“They claw their way in and they’re making deeper and better progress,” Couch said on “Talkline.”
The environmental science firm contracted by local officials, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, reported steadily improving conditions through a press release that was issued Tuesday evening.
The contractor launched a testing regimen that features continuous air monitoring reinforced by frequent air sampling collections meant for laboratory analysis, according to the release put out by Wood County officials and distributed by the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety.
“Aside from the visible soot particles, the initial results show little or no detectable levels of other likely chemicals in the smoke affecting the community,” the news release stated.
“The levels of those soot particles, meanwhile, represent a moderate air quality impact — comparable to that of a wildfire.”
There is no shelter-in-place order in Parkersburg, although officials have advised locals to stay inside if they can. Schools and county offices have been shut down so far this week.
“Our concern would be for people who already have some sort of respiratory issue such as asthma or some sort of COPD,” Nony said. “The advisory would be for those people to avoid the smoke as much as they can. That’s still a good practice to follow so that we can limit that exposure.”
Testing is also being conducted by the state Division of Environmental Protection. The information, which will be continuously updated, is available online here. The full air monitoring report is still being compiled and an updated version will be posted once those results are included.
Sampling conducted by the WVDEP’s Homeland Security and Emergency Response team using handheld air monitors includes data on volatile organic compounds, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, chlorine, and ammonia.
Couch said water runoff from the fire site is also a concern and that the river is being monitored.
The 420,000 square feet of property, which was storing recyclable plastics for a small business, caught fire early Saturday morning and has been burning ever since, sending a plume of smoke billowing over the city and across the Ohio border.
Over the next days, local leaders said, the fire will have to be fought by using equipment to remove material to gain access to other smoldering material.
Specialized Professional Services Inc., a hazmat and environmental emergency response company from Washington, Pa., has been contracted to lead the effort.
The owners of the burning property, IEI Plastics, were present at a county meeting Sunday night and again Monday morning. They pledged to help with the firefighting effort and cleanup through their insurance.
A concern of everyone’s is better identifying the plastic or chemical material that’s burning beneath the collapsed warehouse.
Couch said Tuesday that the owners provided a Material Safety Data Sheet in a three-ring binder, but it wasn’t current.
“And so we did a leaf-through with that with some industry experts,” he said. “We compiled a short list on it. We had further discussion. They said not all of it was there. We’re still trying to determine.”
He said local leaders are also cross-checking with the company’s suppliers. At today’s news conference, officials said those efforts to compile specific information about the material being stored in the warehouse were still ongoing.
Lawrence Messina, a spokesman for the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, agreed that a list circulating from the Material Safety Data Sheet may not be reliable.
“That volume is dated. So folks should, to the degree possible, avoid speculating about what was at the site based on those records because they may not in fact truly depict what was there,” Messina said.
Messina said the most accurate records were on paper at the site that was destroyed by fire. So now the process is to try to reconstruct records of what had been at the site by going over emails of shipping records.
“I think all parties recognize this is a key question that county officials and state officials have been working to answer,” Messina said. “We just hope people will bear with us as we drill down to figure out what we’re dealing with.”