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GELFAND’S WORLD - The Garden Grove tank which is leaking something called methyl methacrylate (MMA) is another wakeup call for us regarding the witches’ brew of refinery stuff (along with other industrial hazards) in our area. The sobering fact is that the MMA leak is one of the lesser problems. There could be an explosion, but leakage along the ground would probably not be a mass casualty event.
This comforting statement is not true for other substances in our midst.
A few years ago, there was an explosion at a local refinery that came perilously close to damaging a container of Hydrogen Fluoride (HF). It was right next to a residential neighborhood. The problem with HF – so much worse than MMA – is that it is highly toxic. It will go right through your skin and kill you.
There is an effective way of protecting the community from the threat of HF. Don’t use it. There are other ways of making high octane gasoline. You can read about the dangers here. Notice that there are several dozen refineries which use HF, but lots of other refineries which get by without it.
The problem for us, as residents of the Los Angeles area, is that the legal structure to rid ourselves of the HF menace, not to mention the political backbone, are both lacking.
Think about that as you read what candidates for public office are presenting as their highest priorities in this primary election. We’re not hearing a lot about prevention of a mass casualty event due to an industrial accident, nor are we hearing almost anything about earthquake preparedness. When political candidates talk about public safety, they generally concentrate their comments on punishing criminals and funding the police force. What the police force and the Fire Department are supposed to do in the case of a natural or industrial disaster is another thing entirely.
If that sentence sounds a little strange, allow me to explain:
A few years ago, I started pointing out that there aren’t a lot of ways to get out of the harbor area, and at least one of the roads – damaged in a landslide in 2011 – is yet to be repaired. Generations of City Councilmen have failed to insist loudly enough to get the repair completed. Think about that. It’s fifteen years of studies and excuses, but no action.
Understand one other thing. I’m not super sensitive about the idea of chemicals. Over the course of my professional career, I used ether, acetone, lots of formaldehyde, and chemicals that can alter DNA or destroy neural tissue. You just have to have the right facilities and you have to be careful.
So I don’t think of myself as overly paranoid about the idea of chemistry. I used to use radioactive isotopes to study RNA, until other more automated methods became available. Everything has some risk, and some risks are acceptable in the quest to find more effective methods of diagnosing and treating serious diseases such as cancer and heart failure.
I also understand that we are an industrial society and that factories, refineries, and large R&D facilities can suffer fires, explosions, and leaks. As a civilization, we accept a certain amount of risk in exchange for the benefits. But we don’t have to place these facilities right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. And yes, I understand that there are historical issues – some refineries and oil wells were built before the neighborhoods grew up around them. But that doesn’t mean we should continue to suffer the risk of a hydrogen fluoride leak right where thousands of people live. Removing HF is an accommodation that the refinery could make. The political and legal structures should develop sufficiently to force the issue.
And then there is the issue of getting people out of an area which is threatened by a large fire. It’s mainly a problem of keeping traffic moving on the main streets and getting traffic onto the main streets from all the feeder streets.
When peoples’ lives are at risk, why can’t we do as well as the Rose Parade?
Here’s how I became aware of the early stages of the Palisades fire. I was talking on the phone to somebody who lived in that area and gradually figured out that I was talking to somebody who was fleeing the developing fire but was caught in a traffic jam. What I have learned is that the authorities had neither the manpower nor a sufficient plan to get people out of the area efficiently.
It’s not a new problem. I have been wondering (and complaining) about the lack of prior planning in the event of a dangerous gas leak in the harbor area, but when you think about it, the lack of planning for evacuation from fires is similar, and the lack of adequate preparation has already killed a lot of people. I suppose it is possible that the various fire departments – county and smaller cities – already have plans for various contingencies, but the people who are kept in the dark are all of the rest of us. There ought to be a large collection of plans that are communicated to the public through public meetings hosted by elected officials. The whole process ought to be led by the L.A. city mayor, by the mayors of our smaller cities, and by some county official. That would be leadership.
Just to make the point more clearly, let’s consider the situation that developed during the Palisades fire and think about the Rose Parade. Thousands of people loaded their cars and tried to make it downhill towards Sunset Blvd. The problem with any such situation is that the Sunset Blvd intersections of all the downhill feeder streets got gridlocked pretty quickly. What happened in practice is that some people made it out of the fire zone, and some people ended up abandoning their cars and going on foot. There is a better way, but it involves having the manpower to execute a plan.
One way would be for the authorities to determine that Sunset Blvd would immediately be converted to an all-eastbound road. Simultaneously, several hundred traffic control people would be spread out along the intersections, controlling traffic both along Sunset and along the feeder streets. The idea here is to prevent all the stop-and-go slowdowns that occur when traffic from a feeder street gets in the way of all those cars that have already made it onto Sunset.
One solution is to hold all the feeder streets for five or ten minutes while traffic clears out on Sunset. Then hold traffic along Sunset while the feeder streets are allowed to empty onto Sunset. Rinse and repeat. The idea is to get everyone moving at 35 miles per hour without braking, and to do so for several miles. Then do the same for all those cars on the feeder streets.
Anybody who has been to the Rose Parade knows that the authorities plan for their traffic issues well in advance and arrange to move traffic along the Arroyo expeditiously. They get tens of thousands of people in and out of Pasadena effectively.
Maybe there is a better way, but it would be useful to know that the authorities are thinking about what to do and that they are preparing to do it. There is no evidence that any such plans or preparations currently exist. When the Palisades fire became a matter of life or death, the authorities didn’t have an effective plan. What will they do for the next big fire?
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
