N.C. Plant Fire Forces Thousands to Evacuate

APEX, N.C., Oct. 6 -- A chemical fire and plume of toxic chlorine gas forced thousands of residents of this Raleigh suburb from their homes Thursday night, closed schools and downtown businesses on Friday, and defied firefighters' attempts to put the blaze under control.

As a result, more than 17,000 people will not be able to return home until at least Saturday morning, Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly said Friday.

The fire at a waste-management plant and a resulting series of explosions began late Thursday, prompting the evacuation of nearly half of Apex's population. More than three dozen people were treated at area hospitals for breathing problems.

The fire ignited at EQ Industrial Services Inc., a Michigan-based company. Weatherly said the company's inventory at the Apex plant included fertilizer, organic oxides and pesticides.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

"Because of the many different types of waste that we bring in, it's very difficult to determine the cause of the fire," EQ spokesman Robert Doyle told the Associated Press.

State Department of Environment and Natural Resources officials told the AP that their tests "had not detected anything out of the ordinary in the air." Water supplies downstream from the fire appeared to be safe, the department reported, although it will conduct more tests.

Most residents apparently found shelter with friends nearby or in hotel rooms, as only a few hundred showed up Thursday night at two shelters. By Friday morning, the two shelters had been consolidated into one, at Green Hope High School in Cary, an adjacent suburb of Raleigh.

Apex High School student Sasha Brown said she was about to step into the shower at 10:30 p.m. Thursday when a police officer knocked on the door to tell her family to leave and head for a nearby shopping center.

"Then they said it was more serious," she said.

After about 20 minutes at the shopping center, Brown's family was told to go to a shelter set up at an elementary school.

Brown, 17, said she left home wearing fluffy bedroom slippers, light blue with white clouds, that were quickly drenched by a downpour outside.

"They're not blue anymore," she said, sitting at the lunch table. A shelter worker found her a pair of clean socks.

Apex resident Judy Davari said she and her husband and two children were about to leave for a hotel room when a friend called and said, "We heard you have to leave -- come over." Davari added, "I can't tell you how many offers I've had."

Weatherly said that evacuated residents will be allowed to begin returning home once the plant fire is extinguished and hazardous-materials experts determine that there is no further risk of poison gas being released.