Community organizers, speakers and residents affected by the fire at the BioLab plant in Rockdale County packed into The Movement Church in Conyers on Tuesday night to discuss what comes next for their community more than two months after a chemical plume was released into the air.
Nearly two months after a massive chemical fire at BioLab’s Conyers plant forced evacuations and raised environmental and health concerns, new details are emerging.
Six weeks after a massive fire at the BioLab plant released chemicals into the air, triggering evacuations and weeks of shelter-in-place notices, the company has partially reopened its Conyers facility to fulfill customer orders.
Weeks after a fire at the BioLab chemical plant in Conyers, residents are still grappling with the aftermath. County officials are suing BioLab and its parent company, seeking damages for those affected. Protesters are demanding the plant’s shutdown after this, the latest in a history of incidents.
The Office of Emergency Management sent out an alert to warn residents of a chlorine smell and hazy conditions expected to move toward Atlanta on Wednesday night and Thursday as a result of the recent BioLab plant fire in Conyers, Ga.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency is warning that winds could shift and people in much of Atlanta could still see haze and smell chlorine by Thursday morning. The poor air quality effects come from a chemical reaction Sunday at BioLab, a pool supply manufacturing plant in Conyers.
Emergency crews extinguished a fire at a Georgia chemical plant shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday, allowing officials to lift a shelter-in-place order issued in the afternoon when the fire broke out for the second time in the day.
Authorities are evacuating neighborhoods near a chemical plant where a large fire is burning in coastal Georgia. Glynn County commission Chairman Wayne Neal estimated roughly 100 households had been ordered to evacuate, mostly because of potential smoke hazards.
The facilities are located in every state, and are threatened by floods, hurricanes and wildfires that can cause dangerous leaks and explosions, according to a federal watchdog.