The alarm sounded at the plant,
which is located on U.S. Route 60, around 8:25 a.m. C.W. Sigman, Kanawha County
“When we got off the MacCorkle Avenue
Clearon facility manager Scott
Johnson said the company could not immediately confirm how much of the chemical
was released into the air, but employees worked quickly to contain it.
“All employees were accounted for
at the beginning of this incident and all are safe,” Johnson said.
A shelter-in-place alert was issued
for South Charleston , Dunbar and North Charleston
“Emergency management and Clearon
folks went down to the lower end of the city limits and Dunbar
area and tried to assess the situation. The plant folks checked [the air],
couldn’t find anything on our monitors. They had the meters to check it,” said
Sigman. “They could smell a minor amount of chlorine but nothing significant.”
That cloud soon dispersed and the
odor was gone but the shelter in place wasn’t lifted until shortly after 10
a.m.
Sigmon said Clearon employees and
emergency responders worked alongside each other to flush the chemical.
“It’s plant personnel and South
Charleston/Dunbar firefighters working as one, the way it should be,” the
deputy director said.
Johnson said the next phase is
finding what caused the leak.
“We’re doing a complete
investigation of the incident to find out what happened, where and how we can
address it,” said Johnson, noting that an OSHA investigator was brought
onsite.
Though Johnson praised response
from the county’s team, he said there was one glitch involving the alarm
extending beyond its intended area.
“That shelter-in-place was
originally identified for the local community,” he said. “My understanding is
it went out to the entire county and that’s one of the things that we’ll have
to work on further with that system.”
The Clearon plant, which employs
118 workers, was on a routine maintenance shutdown at the time of the incident.
