CALHOUN — Fire erupted at an adhesives plant early Friday, lighting up the North Georgia sky with massive flames and spewing fumes which local officials worried could be toxic.
Calhoun City Schools were closed and residents in the area around DHM Adhesives Inc. were evacuated due to public health worries. But by Friday afternoon, environmental experts determined the air was safe and residents were allowed to return home.
“The air quality is good,” Ben Franco, on-scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said. Tests were also conducted on runoff water, but the results could take several days, Franco said.
A cause of the fire had not been determined. The plant is located about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta.
One DHM employee was being treated at a local burn unit late Friday, according to Calhoun Deputy Fire Chief Terry Mills. Nine others were working inside at the time of the fire.
No firefighters were injured, though Mills said that by Friday afternoon fatigue had set in. Earlier Friday, Gordon and Bartow county firefighters assisted. Crews dumped more than 2 million gallons of water on the fire overnight, Mills said.
The Hicks family lives next door to the business and awoke to the sound of police pounding on the front door, alerting them to the flames. Laura and Justin Hicks grabbed their three young sons, but didn’t have time to grab their wallets or change clothes. Blake, 6, had to leave behind the tooth he lost Thursday and stashed under his pillow.
“I was terrified,” Laura Hicks told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The family has rented the home for six years, and Hicks said she often worried about having small children so close to a busy street. She had never given the adhesives business a second thought.
Justin Hicks said the smell in the air was nauseating, similar to a gas smell. Relatives picked up the Hicks family so the little ones could get some sleep.
“I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t know what was going on,” Laura Hicks said.
Late Friday afternoon, the Hicks were allowed to return to their home to retrieve clothes and the family van. But the smell of smoke and chemicals was overpowering, so it was likely they’d have to spend the night with family again.
Attempts to contact DHM officials were not immediately successful. DHM touts its product line as “environmentally safe adhesive technology.” It also performs contract manufacturing for other companies.
Much of DHM’s product line is used to adhere paper and plastic packaging, including for frozen products, pharmaceuticals, envelopes and the gel-like glue found on new credit and gift cards, according to its website.
One of its adhesives is ethylene-vinyl acetate, the company’s website said. That compound is flammable and short-term exposure can cause eye, skin and lung irritation, according to a material safety data sheet for the chemical.
Kevin Chambers, a spokesman for the state Environmental Protection Division, said the agency dispatched a member of its emergency response team to the fire.
“The runoff was controlled so there is no visible impact to waterways,” Chambers said in an email.
He said there were no signs of a fish kill or stress to aquatic life in a nearby creek, which empties into the Coosawattee River, Chambers said.
Later in the day, a state official issued a statement contradicting part of what Chambers said. The official said late Friday some discoloration was observed in the stream but said no effects on wildlife were noted.
During part of the day, the fire department put water sparingly on the scene so that containment systems for runoff could be put in place, the official said.
An AJC review of a state EPD database found only one complaint to state environmental regulators at the DHM plant’s address.
In the 2013 complaint, an unnamed person who self-identified as an employee alleged oils were dumped on part of the property and poor-quality glues were poured into city sewers. State regulators ultimately did not confirm the complainant’s account and found no violations of state environmental rules.
— AJC photojournalist John Spink contributed to this article.
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