A few yellowing maps hang on the wall of Salt Lake County's emergency operations center, located beneath the jail parking lot. Before he started using a computer, Salt Lake County Fire Capt. Calvin Latsis would use the maps to painstakingly, by hand, calculate potential catastrophes. One of the maps is torn. "I got frustrated," Latsis said.
Now, he can calculate disasters in about a half day. A couple of keystrokes brings up a map of the valley on the computer screen, then a map quadrant; a few more keystrokes, and little smokestacks - each representing a firm that manufactures, uses, stores or transports extremely hazardous substances - blacken the map along the major transportation corridors. The circles that denote potential toxic plumes overlap, and virtually cover the maps."Basically, there's not a spot in the county that couldn't be affected by a chemical emergency," Latsis said. "That's not unusual. That's the society we live in."
Salt Lake County Fire Capt. Dennis Steadman said petroleum products are the most often-spilled toxic substances and pose the greatest risk to valley residents. Next comes sulphuric acid, followed by chlorine.
Businesses are required to disclose to fire officials what is on, or moves through, their premises. The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Utah businesses are the most responsive to this regulation, with an 80 percent compliance rate. Nationally, the compliance rate is in the 45 to 50 percent range, Latsis said.
Large firms, which often have their own on-site safety teams, generally comply with the regulations, Latsis said. "It's the chlorine user at the pool, and other mom-and-pop operations, that are less likely to comply," he said. "We've experienced the greatest problems with them. They just don't know what they're doing."
There was a time not so long ago that Latsis didn't know what he was doing, either. But since making a mistake that still weighs heavily on his mind, he's become a national expert on responding to hazardous materials spills or fires.
"Everyone has been chemically unconscious until the past couple of years," he said. "Basically, we were putting the wet stuff on the red stuff."
Charging in and squirting water on a toxic blaze, or sending firefighters onto a toxic spill scene before thoroughly assessing the situation has killed firefighters and police in other cities.
It nearly happened here one June evening 11 years ago.
Three television stations had decided to convert their nitro-cellulose film to modern videotape. The video company the stations had hired to do the conversion caught fire.
At sundown, firefighters responded to a report of smoke. Latsis was the incident commander. Eleven of the firefighters he sent in ended up in the hospital.
"I had two I thought I had killed. I decided I'd start reading," he said. "Everybody who's in a position like mine got in it because of some kind of mistake they made."
By 1986, Latsis was one of 25 people qualified to teach hazardous materials response in the nation, and had been named Salt Lake County's hazardous materials coordinator. He teaches all over the country, including at the national firefighters' school in Washington, D.C.