Pima County slams state agency for delayed release of emergency information during hazmat crash
Pima County officials are looking into problems relaying emergency information to the public that occurred last week when a truck carrying nitric acid crashed south of Tucson, killing the driver and releasing an orange-colored gas plume.
The collision occurred on Interstate 10 between Kolb and Rita roads on Feb. 14 and resulted in the death of the driver. The accident prompted four emergency alerts to be sent out to the public urging people to shelter in place.
However, the Pima County Board of Supervisors, county staff and residents said more detailed and accurate information should have been communicated to the public sooner from the state Department of Public Safety, which led the response in conjunction with the Tucson Fire Department.
According to the county, during the day of the accident and into the night, little information about what was happening and public health information was communicated to the public.
At a Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, a resident told the board he was not aware of the alerts because he did not have his cell phone on him and drove straight into the area where the incident occurred.
He described gridlock traffic on side roads and people fleeing on foot from the area. He called the communication dissemination a “miserable failure” on the part of Pima County, and complained that he heard no information from the Tucson mayor, the county administrator or the governor.
Supervisor Steve Christy of District 4 whose district encompasses the area of the crash, said that while terrified constituents looked to his office for answers about what was happening, he could not provide any information because he had not been notified.
“In an instance like this, it’s the closest form of local government that people look to for answers,” Christy said. “No one initially contacted me.”
It wasn’t until he spoke with the county administrator on Wednesday morning that he received up-to-date information.
Response was under state jurisdiction
Jan Lesher, the county administrator, noted the county was not in charge of the response. Because the crash occurred on a state road, it was under the jurisdiction of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
“There were communication deficiencies that did occur, and we were not getting information out to the public,” Lesher said.
More on the story: Officials identify man who died in crash that spilled nitric acid, closed I-10 in Tucson
By Wednesday, the county public health department stepped in and began to release information about what the health and safety risks of the hazmat spill might be, she said.
Pima County Office of Emergency Management Director Shane Clark said DPS arrived on the scene at 2:44 p.m. A mass text alert urging nearby residents to shelter in place was delivered at 3:53 p.m., over an hour later.
Four additional shelter-in-place messages were sent out to the public throughout the hazmat spill clean-up until 5:06 p.m. the next day.
“We heard nothing from the state, nothing from the Governor's Office,” Christy said.
Christy described residents seeing an orange-colored plume ricocheting through their neighborhood and recalled the fear he heard in his constituents’ calls to his office.
Details of the crash
The driver who died in the crash was identified as 54-year-old Ricky Immel of Nevada.
Clark said the investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing and a reported 3,575 gallons of nitric acid was spilled. He said there was no reported environmental impact.
Following the crash, wind moved the plume cloud northeast leading to the evacuation of a school, a large industrial complex and a trailer park as well as one resident who lived in the area.
In addition, a fire occurred at the scene and was extinguished.
Clark reiterated that people who drove through the plume in the early minutes of the crash had very little exposure.
He said, according to the Arizona Poison Control Center, someone would need to be within feet of the crash for a prolonged period to be exposed, and any chemical is unlikely to have traveled that far.
Clark said the unified command responded to the emergency “in an excellent fashion” but admitted there were gaps in communication. He said he will bring up these issues during an after-action review of the response.
Coverage of southern Arizona on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is funded by the nonprofit Report for America in association with The Republic.
Reach the reporter at sarah.lapidus@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Pima County slams state for slow release of info during hazmat crash
