‘A missed opportunity’: The EPA kept a chemical-mapping plane on the ground during the BioLab fire

Caption

Robert Kroutil helped design the agency's chemical-detecting aircraft, ASPECT.

Credit: Glenn Rebert

When a massive chemical fire broke out at the BioLab plant in Conyers in September 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had a tool: a plane, capable of mapping the toxic plume in real time. 

It never left the ground.

The Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT) was created to give emergency crews instant information about airborne chemicals. Instead, the EPA deployed a ground-based system that did not begin testing the affected area until nearly a week later.

Former EPA contractor Robert Kroutil, who helped design ASPECT’s software, calls the decision a missed opportunity.

“You can immediately warn the public,” Kroutil said. “There's a plume and [ASPECT] says, ‘This is the area that people need to be evacuated.’”

A tool built for chemical disasters

ASPECT is a single-engine Cessna outfitted with infrared sensors capable of detecting chemicals from the air. The EPA says ASPECT has engaged in over 170 deployments, including BioLab’s 2004 fire in Conyers and a 2020 blaze at the company’s Louisiana facility.

Caption

The Environmental Protection Agency's chemical-detecting ASPECT plane.

Credit: EPA.gov

Kroutil said the plane could have provided crucial data to help first responders track the plume and assess where it was heading.

“It uses artificial intelligence, AI algorithms, to actually detect the chemicals,” Kroutil said. “The sensors pass over the site, they look down, and the data that they receive is then processed on a computer that's in the plane. We can tell within five or 10 seconds what the chemicals are, what the concentrations are.” 

Instead, the EPA sent a mobile lab known as the Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer (TAGA) which collects data from ground level. The agency told GPB the system was the “appropriate resource” for chlorine monitoring and for supporting local public health officials.

In an email statement to GPB, the agency said:

“An operational decision was made by the federal on-scene coordinator to use one of EPA’s specialized Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer (TAGA) mobile laboratories over EPA’s Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT) plane. The TAGA vehicle was the appropriate resource to provide ground level information the state and local officials needed [sic] their public health decisions. 

“TAGA provided the EPA with real time ground level data near key locations such as schools and nearby communities. ASPECT does not take direct measurements from the plume and would require further monitoring with ground-based direct measurement sensors in the areas of concern.”

Kroutil disagrees. 

“TAGA is used for long-term Superfund sites,” he said. Superfund sites are areas with a long history of pollution.

The EPA also cited TAGA’s “rapid deployment capability” as part of the reason why the mobile laboratory was sent instead of ASPECT. EPA records obtained by GPB show the TAGA unit did not begin sampling air until Oct. 5, 2024, nearly a week after the fire began. 

The EPA said its early plume modeling was based on information provided by BioLab about the amount of material reacting inside the warehouse. The agency’s first model used 40,000 pounds of trichloroisocyanuric acid, or TCCA, later increasing that estimate to 50,000 pounds as more data came in.

Federal investigators at the U.S. Chemical Safety Board later found the facility had stored almost 14 million pounds of oxidizers on site, more than twice what BioLab had told Rockdale County officials that warehouse would hold.

The EPA said its “air monitoring data offered a comprehensive view of air quality” from fixed stations and its ground-based TAGA system, “aiding state and local public health officials in making informed decisions to protect affected communities.”

‘We’re doing this again?’

DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox was among the first responders called to help that morning. She didn’t get a call from her commander at first, though; she smelled the fire from her own backyard.

“I was getting ready to go out with my cousin and I kept saying, ‘What is this?’” Maddox said. “You could smell it, but I’m thinking it’s nothing. Then I go outside and see this big black cloud.”

She had been through a BioLab fire before, in 2004, when another toxic plume forced evacuations near a housing complex where her aunt lived. 

“We had to try to get those people out and it was really sad because there were others that had nowhere to go,” she said. 

Her aunt later developed lung problems, which Maddox believes were connected to that 2004 fire.

So, when she got the call that BioLab was on fire again last year, she says it wasn’t just professional instinct that kicked in. It was personal.

“We're doing this again? But this time I'm fully involved as the sheriff,” Maddox said. “I have to respond because that's what we do. We took an oath to protect and serve our community, and we're not going to back down now.”

What they didn’t know

DeKalb County was one of several neighboring jurisdictions that responded to the fire that day. Maddox said none of the crews knew exactly what chemicals were burning or how to protect themselves.

“They had the masks, but they weren’t even sure if that was enough for the chemicals that were there,” she said. 

While the EPA was monitoring the air, the ASPECT plane was the kind of tool that could have made a difference for first responders like Maddox.

“We were running in, not knowing what we were running into,” Maddox said.

For more of GPB and Pamela Kirkland's award-winning coverage, hear the podcast Manufacturing Danger: The BioLab Story, now on Season 2 wherever you get your podcasts.