‘Wakeup Call’: Braintree Chemical Fire, Ohio Derailment Show Need for Stronger Emergency Planning, Experts Say
Ashley Soebroto | March 18, 2023 | The Boston Globe
After several trailers storing chemical materials at a waste disposal facility in Braintree caught fire last month, firefighters who rushed to the scene found the closest fire hydrant was not working. Neither was the one inside the facility.
In those critical moments before firefighters found a working hydrant in the property next door, the blaze had already spread from two trailers to four, Braintree Fire Chief James O’Brien said at a Town Council meeting last month.
“Who’s testing those hydrants? Why would that happen?” Town Councilor Elizabeth Maglio said in an interview. “Of all places for hydrants to not work, it would be in the areas that are most flammable.”
Preliminary findings suggested that materials in the trailers self-reacted and caused the fire on Feb. 16, according to a statement from Clean Harbors, the hazardous waste management company that runs the facility.
These types of toxic releases occur about 150 times each year at industrial and chemical facilities across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Braintree incident, coming on the heels of the Feb. 3 derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio, showed how towns left to clean up the mess from chemical accidents are not always prepared.
“It’s only a matter of time before another major accident like this happens,” said Mike Schade, director of the Mind the Store program at environmental advocacy group Toxic-Free Future. “This really should be a wakeup call for American families to understand that chemical hazards exists all around us.”
In the Braintree accident, Maglio said one of the most concerning aspects was that the town alerted residents to the fire through a Facebook post and not the reverse 911 robocall that is supposed to warn people about emergency situations.
“If there’s a fiery smoky blast, we’re not checking Facebook to find out,” Maglio said, adding that “nobody knows” what the town’s evacuation plan is nor what to do during a chemical accident.
Since several flammable facilities are located in the area, including a nearby natural gas compressor station in Weymouth, Maglio said Braintree urgently needs a better emergency response system.
The Braintree mayor’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment about why the town did not use the reverse 911 robocall, what the town’s current emergency plan looks like, and when it was last updated.
Maglio said the current version of Braintree’s emergency response plan doesn’t focus on preventing chemical disasters, and instead acts as an evacuation plan.
“The draft is inadequate, insufficient, and does little to make anybody feel safer,” Maglio said.
Government officials don’t pay enough attention to preventing accidents due to a lack of funding devoted to such efforts, said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator now president of environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics.
And communication around evacuation plans is an issue across the nation, she said.
Almost 124 million people, or 39 percent of the US population, live within 3 miles of a hazardous facility, according to the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters.
“People living near train tracks need to be informed of the risks and [be] ready for how to deal with an emergency like this,” Enck said.
Regulatory agencies should inform residents about what hazardous substances are being handled or transported near them, she said, and train cars carrying chemicals should be labeled clearly.
