Hazardous Cargo Headed for Treatment Plant Burns

The load of a truck pulling a 40-foot trailer carrying illegal drug-lab chemicals to a Chula Vista toxic-waste storage and treatment plant caught fire Tuesday morning near the entrance to the plant, authorities said.

It was the second incident in less than two months in which the county and city’s hazardous-materials teams had to be called to the plant, authorities said.

A hazardous-materials team and three companies from the Chula Vista Fire Department answered a call shortly after 8 a.m. near the site of Appropriate Technologies II after a small fire erupted in the rig’s trailer as it climbed a hill on Maxwell Road, said Sam Lopez, Chula Vista fire chief.

The truck’s driver heard a loud pop, jumped out and saw smoke coming from the trailer, Lopez said. The truck was carrying about 70 five-gallon containers and 55-gallon drums of drug-lab chemicals. About 30 of the containers were to be delivered to Appropriate Technologies II, said Ken Kazarian, president of the plant.

Seized in L.A. County

The chemicals--primarily ether, acetone and other solvents--had been seized by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the U. S. Department of Justice, Kazarian said.

Firefighters had controlled the small blaze by 10 a.m., after dousing a number of flare-ups and moving the rig to the plant’s site in the 1700 block of Maxwell Road, Lopez said.

Fire officials closed off Maxwell Road and the Otay landfill until about 11 a.m. and evacuated workers at nearby auto-salvage yards and the landfill.

The truck and its cargo were scheduled to stay at Appropriate Technologies II until today, when teams from the county Environmental Health Services department will oversee the repackaging of the chemicals, Kazarian said. He said the repacked load will be trucked to Texas.

Kazarian said the 55-gallon barrel that caught fire was bound for another San Diego toxic site, Pacific Treatment in Logan Heights. The rest of the load was bound for the Casmalia hazardous-waste site in Santa Barbara, he said.

However, Dan Farr, Pacific Treatment’s general manager, said his company was not scheduled to receive any shipments of toxic waste from the Los Angeles-based Disposal Control Service, which was delivering the load.

Appropriate Technologies II, which has been in operation since 1981, leases a 2-acre site from the county and stores and treats household toxics, such as chlorine or pesticides, in addition to chemicals used in making illegal drugs that have been seized by law enforcement agencies.

Fined Last Month

The company was fined $25,000 by the county health department last month for operating without a permit after concerns were raised following two chlorine leaks at the plant in February.

Last month, the Chula Vista City Council unanimously passed a resolution urging the state and county to close the site because its operators had failed to ensure the safety of residents who live less than a mile away. The council also passed a resolution asking that the site be relocated away from residential areas.