Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993                   TAG: 9311160245
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-6   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

EMERGENCY PLANNERS NOT DOING INSPECTIONS

``We haven't gone in to scare anybody. We went in to answer questions,'' committee Chairman Danny Gordon told business leaders at a recent luncheon meeting at Birdmont Manor.

The planning committee was organized, as required by state law, to prepare an emergency response plan covering such accidents as chemical spills or explosions, helping local industries meet the documentation requirements showing what chemicals they use, and receiving citizen requests to check into chemicals used at a particular plant.

Each company designates a coordinator to provide the data needed by the committee, explained Todd Branscome, the county's emergency services coordinator, ``so that we can get this plan together. And another thing is to coordinate our plan with your plan.''

Company plans for such measures as plant evacuation must include a way of accounting for all workers afterward, he said. Otherwise, rescue teams might find themselves going back into a dangerous situation checking for someone believed missing.

``Some plans I've seen say people go out the front door and go their own way. That won't work,'' Branscome said. ``The last thing we want is somebody getting hurt looking for someone who's home watching TV.''

Albert Newberry, public safety director for the town of Wytheville, said measures to keep track of chemicals date back to the disaster in India in 1984 when a release of dangerous chemicals from a Union Carbide plant resulted in some 2,500 deaths.

``This was the shot that was heard around the world in the chemical business,'' he said. The emergency planning committee can help industries meet requirements which would otherwise come through ``a bewildering and contradictory rule-making government,'' he said.

``The smart person solves problems. The genius avoids them,'' Newberry said. That is what the committee wants to help companies to do.

``Many of us are probably eager to talk to you and have you come into our plants, so we can tell you what we're doing,'' said Chuck Lanigan of Morton International. ``We've got more internal rules than you can inflict on us . . . .

We want the community to be comfortable with us. That's what it's all about.''