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Amid the devastation and mass flooding wrought by Hurricane Helene, the Atlanta metropolitan area had yet another disaster: A chemical fire released a massive plume of potentially toxic gasses into the air. And it’s spreading.
Early Sunday morning, a fire erupted at BioLab, a chemical plant specializing in pool and spa water care, in Conyers, just 30 miles east of Atlanta in Rockdale County. It’s unknown what caused the fire as of publication, but local fire department officials say water from the triggered sprinkler system had reacted with the various chemicals in the building.
Around 11 am ET on Sunday, officials requested that all church services be closed. By 11, several local roads were closed, and by around 1 pm officials ordered about 17,000 people in Conyers to evacuate, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Georgia’s environmental protection division ran air quality tests, where they detected chlorine around the facility. Chlorine is a toxic gas that can have negative short- and long-term health effects. Around noon, as first responders were putting the initial fire out and removing products from the facility, the fire reignited.
“We are all focused on remediating the situation as rapidly as possible,” the company said in its most recent statement.
Officials then instituted a shelter-in-place order late Sunday evening for Rockdale County, which comprises around 90,000 people. Fulton County, which includes parts of Atlanta, has reported “a haze and strong chemical smell” this morning, which local officials stated is likely due to the BioLab fire.
Although acute exposure to chlorine gas causes various symptoms, including coughing, irritation in the eyes and nose, skin irritation, and a burning sensation in the chest, multiple agencies said that the chlorine in the air does not pose a threat to most people. At time of publication, health agencies have not identified any specific high-risk populations such as those with preexisting respiratory conditions.
All of this comes after Hurricane Helene’s wreckage, leaving resources and communication from local officials stretched thin. It’s an alarming glimpse at what can happen when multiple disasters occur at once, and it highlights the need for better preparation for such cases.
Delays in official communication
A shelter-in-place order is still in effect in Rockdale County. Officials recommend local residents keep their windows and doors closed and the AC off, presumably to prevent toxic gasses from getting in. All Rockdale County government facilities are closed, as are several roads in the area. County officials advised businesses to keep their operations closed until the shelter-in-place order is lifted.
On its Facebook page, the county posted a video showing the aftermath of the fire. The front, left, and right sides of the plant “totally collapsed,” according to Marian McDaniel, the county’s chief of fire rescue. She said that once they’ve removed debris from the fire, they will bring down the remaining side and retrieve the remaining “product” from the ruins of the facility.
“Nothing that we can do or will be done to make this product any worse than it already is,” McDaniel told the press. The clouds and smoke should go away once the remaining chemicals are removed from the building.
But as the gas dissipates, which may take days, it’s also moving toward other parts of Georgia — cities and towns that may not have had clear directions on what to do. That’s on top of dealing with the fallout from Helene.
The Georgia Emergency Services and Homeland Security Agency issued a local area emergency Monday afternoon to residents living within a 50-mile radius of the BioLab fire, a full day later. At that point, thousands of residents in nearby Fulton and Gwinnett Counties had already left their homes to go to school, work, doctor’s appointments, and more, unsure why the air smelled adjacent to a swimming pool.
The Atlanta Fire Rescue Department conducted air quality tests Monday afternoon to detect chlorine and other chemicals in the air across the city. They said they’ve found “no immediate life safety issues,” but didn’t provide further information about chlorine levels. They also have requested additional testing from state and federal agencies.
Georgia’s Department of Public Health has added that there is “no significant toxicity identified in the smoke” so far, but that people with heart or lung disease may be particularly affected and experience symptoms, such as shortness of breath.
What’s next?
While the immediate focus is on cleaning up the damaged facility, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how the BioLab fire will affect neighboring communities in the future.
Currently, there is no publicly available information about how much chlorine has escaped into the air or what levels local residents are being exposed to.
Long-term exposure to chlorine can cause prolonged health issues such as potentially irreparable lung damage. Even a one-time exposure to high levels of chlorine can have negative health effects, which makes the question of how much is currently in the air over Georgia only more pressing.
This isn’t the first fire to break out at this BioLab plant in Conyers — there have been at least three in the past two decades. The last fire happened just four years ago. It raises the question of accountability, whether the plant has done anything to meaningfully prevent these disasters, and the impact of repeated exposure to chemical fires and leaks on communities.
It’s also too early to tell what, if any, accountability BioLab will face after this fire. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the chairman of Rockdale County’s governing body, Oz Nesbitt, said that the Board of Commissioners will be speaking with BioLab’s leadership about “their safety and their mitigation plan and their security plan inside their operations.”
While multiple agencies responding to the incident have assured residents that the fire poses little to no harm to human health, many residents are unsatisfied and have left comments on Rockdale County’s Facebook page expressing their concern and frustration about the uncertainties.
“Who is going to jail over this?” wrote one commenter. “Just asking, considering how many people are going to be injured by this, and how much damage will be done to the local environments? This facility is a known problem, and has been for years.”
