By Michael Brand
Chemicals, heat, disaster.
On Monday, the town of Omaha saw all three of these things in action. A Nox-Crete chemical factory caught on fire, leading to large explosions, causing public health officials to recommend citizens to either shelter in place or if in close proximity to evacuate.
Fortunately, the three alarm fire did not significantly injure anyone and was put out early Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire remains unknown, but firefighters found propane tanks, which are easily flammable. Although the flames from the fire were extinguished, there still remains work to do as most of the debris washed off into city sewers, meaning public health officials will have to monitor waste water in the weeks to come.
One would expect Omaha to be prepared for such a fire given it is home to “nearly half a million people in Nebraska, and manufactures chemical products” (Ives). What makes this fire noteworthy was not its size, or impact on the community, but rather the scary pattern it shows. In a town hall meeting on Wednesday it became evident that the fire department took no precautionary steps that would have prepared it to easily put out the fire, or at the very least limit its damages.
They did not have a file on the chemicals stored in the building, which would have been a key piece of information in determining how to put out the fire safely. They did not have carbon dioxide, which would have been a less risky option than using water in which the chemicals could runoff into rivers, streams, and groundwater which the community drinks out of. They waited two and a half hours to start using foam to put out the fire, and they did not even have enough foam to do so. The emergency alert to residents in the area was only sent in English, which is ineffective when citizens in that area speak over 120 different languages. These are only a handful of over a dozen missteps, which could have been prevented with precautionary planning.
Omaha has consistently failed to plan for disasters, the pattern proven by “last year’s natural disasters: a windstorm that blocked streets with trees and caused extensive power outages, and flash flooding that damaged an unknown number of homes and businesses” (Gaardener). Again one finds a similar lack of planning including the following: alerts in a single language, lack of communication, resource shortages, a lack of permeable surfaces, a lack of a strong enough power grid.
This pattern of failing to have any precautionary planning when it comes to potential disasters, is one seen across the country at the local, state and federal level. The examples are numerous - failing to do prescribed burns to curb the California wildfire season, failing to have stronger weathering regulations on Texas’ powergrid before a record breaking winter lead to power failures across the state, failing to endorse precautions like mask-mandates and social distancing at the beginning of the pandemic. Chemicals and fire do not have to equate to disaster. The only reason they do is because our country, at every level of government, fails to consider ways to prevent potential disasters and instead wait to mitigate them after it's too late.
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