Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Hazmat team called to mercury exposure at the Ramada Limited motel in Bakersfield, California


Hazmat team called to mercury exposure at Bakersfield motel


 
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) -- 
 
Hazmat teams were called to a hotel on Wible Road Monday morning in response to a mercury exposure.

At least one room in the Ramada Limited motel was placed on lockdown because of a spill that started last week at another location and somehow made it past the quarantine.

Now officials say both locations are contaminated.

The first spill was at a rental home on Lincoln Avenue, where a woman lives with her teenage son.

“Not sure where they obtained this mercury, what the source is, or why they had it,” said Donna Fenton of Kern County Environmental Health.

“The story that we have, to us, is that a teenager found a bottle of liquid mercury in a shed,” said Battalion Chief Danny Brown of the Bakersfield Fire Department.

Both members of the family were exposed and then decontaminated.

They took a few blood tests and should be okay.

The fire department is still trying to figure out how the mother was exposed to the mercury a second time and how she brought it to the motel where she was staying.

“Somehow or another she either reentered the house at some point, but she became re-contaminated,” said Brown.

It takes a lot of time to clean up the mess and it can be expensive to clean up the chemical that officials say should not have been in the house in the first place.

We don’t know if this family had any symptoms, but it could have been bad – often times involving neurological problems.

“People tend to think it's something fun to play with,” said Brown. “It's toxic, it gets everywhere like a spill of water would. It runs.”

Fenton says other organs can also be affected, like the kidneys, heart, or lungs.

“It just depends on the type of exposure,” she said.

The Department of Toxic Substance Control was called out to control the spill.

Fenton doesn’t believe anybody else was exposed.