Friday, October 06, 2006

"Firefighters battling hazardous materials fire in suburban Raleigh town"

Wow. Such crazy news for a pretty normal Friday morning. Around 10pm last night, after explosions and fire at a hazardous waste plant released noxious gases and flames 150 feet high over the town, 17,000 evacuted from the town of Apex.


Photo that was on this morning's N&O front page.

The small, yet growing, town of Apex just outside of Raleigh found itself in all the major news media headlines this morning: CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, and even the BBC are all covering the developing story in their headlines.

From WRAL.com
"Apex and Wake County officials declared a state of emergency early Friday and evacuated about 17,000 people -- more than half of the town -- within hours.

The evacuation area is bordered by U.S. Highway 1, N.C. Highway 55 and U.S. Highway 64. N.C. 55 has been closed to traffic.

(evacuation area:)


The prognosis is optimistic as far as clearing the air," Mayor Keith Weatherly said. "The rain is potentially dissipating the particulates in the air."

Hazmat crews were set to begin inspecting the EQ plant at about 10 a.m. Friday, Weatherly said. Firefighters stayed away from the blaze overnight because the combination of darkness and the chemical cloud made it too dangerous.

"This is the worst possible hazardous materials incident you could have," Town Manager Bruce Radford said.

Radford said the fire appeared to be dying down Friday morning. He attributed that to the rain and the fact that most of the combustible material in the plant had been consumed."

Thankfully our house and my office are plenty far away from the affected area and with the winds coming out of the north, it should stay that way. Not exactly what I expected to wake up to this morning...

3 comments:

Becky said...

hey girl!
i saw raleigh on cnn and fox today--that is crazy! i was relieved to remember that you live around 45 minutes north of apex (thanks to memories from jen's wedding!). take care down there!!!

Heather said...

As you can imagine, I did a "whatever the equivalent of a double-take but with your ears is" when I had the BBC noon news on in the background and heard them say Apex, NC! I was glad to hear that there were no major injuries or fatalities...

Justin Shaddix said...

Wow, and Apex is the "peak of good livin'"