Joshua Sebold
Staff Writer
11/11/2009

    It appears Sierra Chemical, the company whose driver mixed the wrong chemicals at Sierra Pacific Industries’ Quincy site, a mistake that led to a Hazmat situation and injured four people, has experienced similar incidents leading to the release of chlorine gas into a populated area on multiple occasions.
    Records show that last Monday’s incident was at least the third in the company’s history of creating a chlorine gas leak by accidentally mixing the wrong chemicals.
    The SPI incident, which sent four people to the emergency room and left one of them in the hospital for an overnight stay, might have been the least appalling as the other two occurred at swimming pools.
    Press releases from the Environmental Protection Agency and Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office detail these previous incidents.
    The Santa Clara press release from May 2007 announced Sierra Chemical pleaded no contest to releasing chlorine gas at a high school swimming pool in Sunnyvale the previous year.
    In that case the district attorney’s office said the company sent the wrong chemical to the school and the driver failed to realize the tank in the pool equipment room had a chemical in it that shouldn’t have been mixed with what was in his truck.
    The release indicated the error “created a potentially deadly chlorine gas cloud which wafted over Kings Academy and an adjacent Montessori daycare center.”
    Seven children were taken to hospitals and released shortly thereafter.
    The press release reported Sierra Chemical paid $27,000 for the emergency response and an additional fine of $69,000 while the driver, who pleaded no contest to the same charge, paid a fine of $3,450 and faced 100 hours of community service.
    The district attorney’s office said the release of chlorine gas through this type of mistake was “all too common in California and around the world. Sierra Chemical will alter its delivery system statewide to ensure that hoses carrying one chemical will not fit onto tanks delivering the other.”
    The EPA press release from September 2008 reported Sierra Chemical was also fined $29,100 for accidentally creating chlorine gas at a community swimming pool in Reno, Nev., resulting in swimmers being transported to local hospitals.