"CONYERS, Ga. — More than twice the amount of swimming pool chemicals as planned were improperly stored at a Georgia plant, setting conditions for a fire in 2024 that sent a huge plume of orange and black smoke into the sky and forced residents to shelter in place, a federal agency report concluded.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that components of a sprinkler system inside the BioLab plant “had been experiencing significant corrosion and leaking” since 2019. That was shortly after the company began storing the chemicals at the plant, the agency said in its final report on the fire Tuesday.
The huge sacks “would naturally off-gas chlorine fumes that combined with ambient humidity in the warehouse and condensed as hydrochloric acid droplets” on the metal sprinkler heads, the report said.
During a sprinkler inspection in December 2023 at the plant in Conyers, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Atlanta, over 1,100 sprinkler heads were found to be corroded, it said."
