South Gate Chlorine Gas Leak Sends 57 to Hospital

Wind-spread chlorine gas from a broken pipeline at a South Gate manufacturing plant sent 32 children and teachers and 25 workers to hospitals today for treatment of nausea and respiratory and eye injuries. About 250 students and teachers from Tweedy Elementary School and 350 workers from the Dial Corp. Purex plant were evacuated. In high concentrations, the gas can cause death or serious burns.

Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Gordon Pearson said four of the workers appeared to be critically injured.

But a spokeswoman for St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, where the four were taken, said the only workers brought in there were in stable condition. A 10-year-old girl, originally said to be critically ill from inhaling the gas, was later reported in stable condition at the same hospital.

Pearson said the gas escaped when construction workers broke a pipeline just outside the plant at Atlantic and Rayo avenues about 8:45 a.m. The greenish-yellow chlorine cloud drifted at least a half-mile south to the school at 5115 Southern Ave. The students and staff were quickly evacuated to nearby South Gate Park.

Chlorine in its liquid form is used in the manufacture of household bleaches. When exposed to air it quickly vaporizes into a heavier-than-air gas.

Pearson reported witnesses said they saw a sudden burst of gas squirt upward from the pressurized line when it broke. He estimated that about five cubic yards of vapor escaped from the pipe.