A chemical company’s inability to control a chemical reaction and an erroneous accident emergency plan led to injuries of 17 police and ambulance personnel and the evacuation of more than 100 families and businesses, reports the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board in a draft accident report concerning MFG Chemical Inc., Dalton, Ga.

Released on Nov. 16 at an evening public meeting in Dalton, the report says a cloud of toxic allyl alcohol and possibly hydrogen chloride was released when a 2,000-gal chemical reactor burst while processing the company’s first production-scale batch of triallyl cyanurate.

Board investigators say the company’s inability to control heat was the cause of the runaway reaction, which occurred in April.

However, the board also says the company’s emergency plan had only focused on allyl alcohol’s flammability and not its toxicity, which includes eye and respiratory irritation and lung, liver, and kidney damage. Consequently, the company was not equipped to handle such a toxic release, nor did it communicate the release’s toxicity to emergency responders or the community.

Emergency responders, the report says, lacked protective personal equipment to handle the release’s toxicity and had no monitoring devices to detect airborne releases. They were forced to withdraw from the area when attempting evacuations.

Also, ambulance crews were unaware they were entering a toxic hazard zone and were sickened and unable to treat or remove victims. Still, no one was killed or made permanently ill, the report continues.

The board, which is charged with seeking the root cause of chemical accidents, notes that this accident is but the latest in a string of incidents caused by uncontrolled chemical reactions. It is currently investigating seven similar reactive accidents. A final report on the MFG incident is expected in the spring.