Fire in the Sky: Emergency Response
Posted on October 29th, 2009 - 10:30 AMA loud thump woke me up. I looked at my startled husband as he yelled, “Let’s go get the kids.” I stood as our concrete house shook, and grabbed an iron post from the bed to keep my stance. “An earthquake,” I mustered as we exited our room and noticed the hour:12:25 a.m. In the hallway, my eldest daughter hugged me while asking what was going on. Fortunately, our youngest children did not wake up. In our dining room, the window screens were on the floor and the chandelier was swinging from side to side. My brother-in-law phoned to say there was fire in the sky. My immediate thoughts were about an airplane accident. I opened our dining room side door to find the sky changing colors from red to orange to violet. We looked for a radio and soon learned the cause of such chaos: fire at the Caribbean Petroleum (CAPECO) tank farm less than a mile from our home.
What was a long awaited weekend all year long - we were holding our Halloween party - turned into an emergency response for me. Within ten minutes of the explosion, I called our Response and Remediation Branch Chief who in turn called the National Response Center.
As a public affairs specialist in the San Juan office of EPA, I had dealt with minor emergencies; this, however, was a real environmental threat since various drums containing jet fuel, Bunker C, diesel and other petroleum derivatives were on fire. The CAPECO facility is located on Road #28 in an area that encompasses three towns: Guaynabo, Bayamon and Cataño and is next to Fort Buchanan, a large military base. The San Juan Bay is two miles away and wetlands and minor water bodies are nearby. The reason this emergency hit home is because, aside from living nearby the facility, I drive down this very same road at 5 am to go to the gym at Fort Buchanan. The tanks are visible from the road.
The first few hours were frantic as federal, state and municipal agencies tried to contain the fire and activate all emergency protocols to ensure the citizens in this largely populated area were not affected. An Incident Command Center was established within 18 hours at a sports facility in San Juan, and we were deployed to work. The media and citizens needed accurate information. We worked hard to provide it.
I must say I have learned more from this experience than I have before in my seven years at EPA. While the fire is out, now the real work begins. I will keep you posted.
About the author: Brenda Reyes Tomassini joined EPA in 2002. She is a public affairs specialist in the San Juan, Puerto Rico office and also handles community relations for the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division.
Tags: CAPECO, emergency, emergency response, fire, puerto rico
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Question of the Week
October 29th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I would say it is true. The experience seeing and breathing is diffetrent. I was working in New York during Sept 2009 just across the street of WTC. It was some experience I would say…
Nature sunshine
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October 29th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Close to our native home appears. This image is never a green or blue color.
I know the role of the Caribbean after our wonderful Amazon for the Ozone conservancy.
In my native country, when I used to wake up early in the morning, my town altitude location allowed me to observe the greatest capital sky. In my observation, I used to see a red orange color sky. I have being understood that pollution was the master piece of this sky colored.
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October 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
The information was interesting - but - as an emergency response specialist, a retired engineer and senior logistician I cannot understand why it took 18 hours to establish an incident command center.
I have had emergency response command centers begin to be formed within the first 1/2 hour and fully functional within 3 hours. Apparently you do not have an adequate emergency response plan and infastructure in your area. GET ONE!
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BrendaEPA reply on October 30, 2009 9:04 am:
Bob
Thanks for the encouraging words about this blog. However we (EPA) were not the ones who established the ICC. It was the state. We had personnel on the site within 2 hours of the explosion and one person back in the office within 45 minutes of the incident. Our teams from mainland USA arrived within 12 hours.
Our response was coordinated with the state and other federal agencies thus the need to wait for the state to establish an ICC.
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October 29th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
We rely on oil for so many things, yet it can cause so much damage when things go wrong.
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October 29th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Marine tanker terminals and tank farms and refinaries can be major problems. And it only takes one spark from a piece of malfunctioning equipment or a cigarette butt carelessly tossed out by a staff member to set them off. You were lucky, you were prepared. I went through a similar experience when I was living with my mother in Orange. The foreign flagged tanker San Sanena blew up at one of the tank farms in Los Angeles Harbor, sent a fireball into the sky and even though Orange is some distance from Los Angeles Harbor we did get a little bit of shaking. The explosion blew the tanker into three pieces with the stern winding up on the dock flattening a watchman’s hut. Glass windows were knocked out of homes and stores over a wide area of San Pedro. The cause was a mate on the ship tossed a cigar butt into an empty oil cargo tank and the butt set off oil fumes in the tank. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.
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October 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
The petroleum fire in San Juan was an industrial disaster with localized environmental consequences; but is the EPA prepared for a truly environmental disaster, like a Caribbean tsunami, or a water pollution emergency, or an earthquake, etc.?
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