SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Poor communication and conflicting advice to residents hindered the emergency response to a deadly chemical spill in rural Bexar County after a train derailment this summer, a government report says.
Two nearby residents and a Union Pacific train conductor died after chlorine fumes drifted from a punctured tank car on June 28.
The 10-page review released Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency praised the bravery and professionalism of local rescue personnel, but also found room for improvement.
For instance, 911 dispatchers gave inconsistent guidance to many residents, telling some to flee and others to stay in their homes.
When dispatchers told people to ``shelter in place,'' they failed to provide specific instructions like sealing doors and windows. Also, the dispatchers at first didn't realize how serious the emergency was and sent unprotected firefighters into the chlorine plume.
Later, they didn't pass along information from other 911 calls to firefighters at the scene and didn't initiate a computerized telephone warning to 57,000 households that could have been affected.
Firefighters for both the city and county responded to the derailment on the outskirts of San Antonio. But the city ignored potentially key information offered by volunteer firefighters, and the ``unified'' command system was confusing.
Robert Adelman, public safety communications manager for the sheriff's department, told the San Antonio Express-News for its Tuesday editions that dispatchers were dealing with ``sheer pandemonium'' and did an outstanding job. ``Do I think there's room for improvement? Absolutely,'' he said.
He said dispatchers will undergo an eight-hour Internet training course about what to tell victims stuck in a toxic spill.
``We do not have any specialized hazardous materials training,'' Adelman said. ``When it was determined by the fire department to go ahead and advise people to shelter in place, we basically didn't have all the information we needed to provide them.''
The computerized telephone warning system wasn't designed to handle blanket calls to thousands of households, Adelman said, so officials turned to public announcements on television and radio.
The EPA's findings came after a July 16 meeting of emergency officials who responded to the wreck. The city and county aren't required to follow the federal recommendations.
The EPA report found that Gene Hale, 85, and her daughter Lois Koerber, 59, had no hope of being saved. They lived 160 feet from the wreck and had been exposed to chlorine levels that reached nearly 900 times lethal levels.
Randy Jenkins, a spokesperson with the San Antonio Fire Department, said fire officials won't answer questions until they digest the report.
