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  Digest of Chevron Fire Updates
August 23, 2012
 

The Contra Costa Health Services (CCHS) is working with City staff to host a Chevron Refinery Fire Briefing on Monday, August 27th at 10AM in the City Council Chambers.  

CCHS plans to invite the following agencies to report out at the Chevron Refinery Briefing:

Chemical Safety Board
CalOSHA
US EPA
BAAQMD
Contra Costa Office of the Sheriff Emergency Services Division

Richmond: Rate of hospital visits tied to Chevron refinery slowing

By Robert Rogers
Contra Costa Times
Posted:   08/23/2012 12:40:57 PM PDT
Updated:   08/23/2012 06:33:09 PM PDT

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Longtime Richmond resident Michael Johnson fills out paperwork at the temporary office of...
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RICHMOND -- The smoke from Chevron's Aug. 6 fire has long since dissipated, but residents continue to seek treatment in hospitals, though the pace is slowing.
More than 14,600 people had been to hospitals for treatment as of Wednesday, said Randy Sawyer, director of Contra Costa County's hazardous materials program. That number was a jump of more than 5,000 since Aug. 13.
Sawyer said about 1,000 new patients per day showed up complaining of discomforts from Aug. 13 to Aug. 16. The total rose from 12,680 on Aug. 17 to 14,000 by Monday.
Sawyer added, "The rate of hospital visits has slowed, and we expect it to slow to nothing pretty soon."
Meanwhile, the region's clean air agency announced it found slightly elevated levels of soot particles in the air two miles away from the Richmond refinery in a 24-hour period after the fire was mostly out.
Pollution officials acknowledge that their network of monitors can fail to capture local soot from a refinery fire because the smoke can drift beyond the reach of the monitors.
While hospitals cite patient-confidentiality laws in declining to disclose the severity or veracity of most patients' claims, visits have continued to grow since claim centers opened and area attorneys announced lawsuits. All the while, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Richmond and Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo garnered rave reviews from residents and health experts for handling the bulk of patients.
Most patients complain of respiratory and eye discomfort.
Of the 14,600, at least three have been admitted and hospitalized -- two at Children's Hospital Oakland and one at Kaiser, county health officials said.
Wesley Ellis, a Richmond senior, said he was hospitalized at Doctors Medical Center for two days after the fire.
"My glands swelled up, and I couldn't breathe. It was horrible," Ellis said.
Days after the fire, Chevron opened a claims center and established a 24-hour hotline, taking thousands of claims in the first few days. The company has vowed to process all claims within 30 days.
On Aug. 16, Oakland-based attorney John Burris joined two San Francisco firms in suing Chevron on behalf of nine residents, including three children. Burris has since said that he has been contacted by more than 1,000 people and that a class-action suit against the energy giant may be likely.
As to the severity of the symptoms, and why they continue to be reported, Sawyer said, "I haven't talked to the emergency rooms directly, so I don't really know."
About 8,800 of the 14,600 people have been treated at Kaiser.
Chevron has opened a second help and claims center, which will be open until Friday, at North Richmond Community Heritage Senior Apartments in the Community Room, 1555 Fred Jackson Way.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District reported Thursday that it found only slightly elevated concentrations of fine soot particles at the San Pablo monitor from midnight Aug. 6 to midnight Aug. 7 -- after the fire was mostly out. The monitor turns on every six days to monitor fine particles.
Dr. Wendel Brunner, the county public health director, said the results do not suggest people weren't affected by the smoke. Weather conditions that night pushed the smoke high in the atmosphere, he noted.

Staff writer Denis Cuff contributed to this report. Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726 or rrogers@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/roberthrogers.

Air Board: Weather conditions helped disperse Chevron smoke plume

Chevron refinery fire smoke plume
Photo by KTVU viewer M. Cox
Chevron refinery fire smoke plume
KTVU And Wires
RICHMOND, Calif. —
The Bay Area Air District Thursday released the lab results from air samples captured at its San Pablo air monitoring site, concluding that Mother Nature aided in dispersing the thick smoke plume spewed from a fire at Chevron’s Richmond refinery plant.
The San Pablo site was the agency’s closest particulate sampling location to the refinery fire -- located approximately two miles from the Chevron facility.
The agency said the result found concentrations below state and federal air quality standards, but do show marginally higher levels of fire related particulate for this time of year.
The Bay Area generally experiences elevated particulate matter pollution in the winter months when weather conditions trap particulate matter near ground level, the finding reported.
“Weather conditions the night of the fire helped push much of the particulate pollution from the fire high into the atmosphere,” said Eric Stevenson, director of air sciences for the Bay Area Air District. “And the public responded appropriately by sheltering in place and seeking medical attention if they experienced breathing difficulty or concerns about their health.”
The data from the filter sample collected beginning at midnight August 7 through midnight August 8 was analyzed for elemental carbon, organic carbon, weight and other chemical components of particulate matter.
Results from the extensive two-week laboratory analysis found slightly elevated levels of elemental carbon, a marker commonly found after a fire. Results also showed the smoke particles may have lingered in the air after the fire was extinguished.
“The particulate results are what we expected to see given that the monitoring began at midnight after the fire was out,” said Dr. Wendel Brunner, director of public health for Contra Costa Health Services. “These results, however, do not suggest there were not health impacts experienced by residents in the immediate area.”
The result shows concentrations below state and federal air quality standards, but do show marginally higher levels of fire related particulate for this time of year.
The Bay Area generally experiences elevated particulate matter pollution in the winter months when weather conditions trap PM near ground level.
“Weather conditions the night of the fire helped push much of the particulate pollution from the fire high into the atmosphere,” said Eric Stevenson, director of air sciences for the Bay Area Air District. “And the public responded appropriately by sheltering in place and seeking medical attention if they experienced breathing difficulty or concerns about their health.”
Contra Costa Health Services issued a shelter-in-place during the refinery fire and recommended people experiencing trouble breathing seek medical attention.
The agency said the result from the San Pablo filter sample was consistent with measurements taken from the nearest continuous real-time ambient air monitors stationed in Vallejo, Oakland and San Rafael, which did not show high levels of fine particulates on the night of the fire.
In contrast to the continuous monitors, the filter sampler at San Pablo operates every six days on an EPA mandated schedule, and must be analyzed in the laboratory to determine concentrations.
A Bay Area environmental group also leveled charges Thursday that Chevron know about serious corrosion problems before the huge refinery fire in Richmond.
Activists with Communities for a Better Environment told KTVU Chevron knew that corrosive high sulfur crude oil was a risk to cause a catastrophe.
The explosion and fire that injured workers and sent 14,000 people for medical help may have been caused by the very high sulfur content Persian Gulf crude that activists say makes up about 80% of crude oil brought to the facility.
"There's a pattern of piping problems at the unit due to corrosion and we know the sulfur level in their crude has been going up substantially," explained Communities for a Better Environment’s Greg Karras.
Karras said the highest crude sulfur level was just three months ago.
Sulfur can cause pipe corrosion. In fact, Chevron acknowledged sulfur corrosion as the cause of a fire five years ago.
The federal Chemical Safety Board is still investigating the fire.
Communities for a Better Environment is planning to hold a community meeting Thursday night to discuss their findings.

RICHMOND: Environmental group charges Chevron with knowledge of pipe corrosion issues

Posted: 6:22 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012

CoCo County looking to replace emergency notification system after Chevron fire

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Smoke, flames from Chevron Refinery fire
Kevin L. Jones/KTVU.com
Smoke, flames from Chevron Refinery fire
KTVU.com
RICHMOND, Calif. —
Contra Costa County leaders said Thursday that the fact it took up to three hours for the emergency warning system to notify some area residents about the Chevron Refinery fire earlier this month is completely unacceptable.
That's why they are now looking to hire another company to operate the warning system.
San Mateo-based AtHoc is one of the nation's most trusted mass notification system providers. The company provides systems to all branches of the U.S. military, critical federal government agencies including Homeland Security as well as Microsoft, Boeing and other corporations.
The need for such systems only seems to be growing.
"We are seeing that across universities, of course government agencies," said AtHoc CEO Guy Miasnik. "Federal, local, state, industrial facilities, healthcare facilites and many more."
With literally the click of a mouse, AtHoc's system can alert people on any kind of device from a plain old telephone land line to the latest mobile devices. The company can also provide sirens and the emergency alert system.
AtHoc is the kind of firm Contra Costa County is looking for to replace the current contractor that County Supervisor John Goia told KTVU was a mistake.
The night of the Chevron fire, many thousands of residents were alerted hours after the incident. Some received no message at all.
"Open this up to look at a range of vendors and we would rather be thorough rather than fast on this process," said Goia.
Despite AtHoc's being close by and world renowned, no one is a shoe in.
We want to make sure that there is full vetting of all available technology and vendors before final approval, said Goia. Technology changes over night in this area.
"Keeping up to date with that is a critical notion of emergency mass communication for public agencies," explained Miasnik.
Along with another firm in San Diego and others yet unnamed, this Bay Area high-tech will no doubt be in the running for the job.

 

 
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