shelter in place, fools

News of last night's explosions and chemical fires that released a cloud of poisonous chlorine gas into the air in Apex, NC (watch the video. it's impressive) reminds me of my childhood. No, really. I grew up in the "chemical valley" of West Virginia, in a town where a slow river cuts through the hills of the western edge of the Appalachians. Chemical plants line the river for several miles, including a town called Nitro, named for the nitroglycerine plant located there during WWII. I don't know how the area became dominated by the chemical industry, though maybe its because there's a lot of space and not a lot of people, and plenty of people who find a chemical plant a more comfortable place to work than a coal mine. Especially when all the coal mines are closing.

Kids in the midwest practice tornado drills at school (get under a desk, crouch into a ball, cover your head with your arms), but kids in the chemical valley practice Shelter-In-Place. Shelter-In-Place involves closing yourself into a room and sealing up windows, doors, etc. with duct tape. Every Friday at noon a test siren would sound throughout the valley. To those of us at school, it meant it was almost time for lunch.

There's even a Shelter-In-Place mascot. Meet Wally Wise:


He's a turtle. They hide in their homes. Get it? He even has a paunch to, um, help those rural Appalachian types identify with him better, I guess.

My dad has worked on the management end of the chemical industry since I was a kid, and I once had a tshirt with Wally Wise on it. I wonder what happened to it...

Oddly, Apex doesn't seem to have had any Shelter-In-Place plans in place (schools, places of work, etc. are required to in places like Chemical Valley, WV). That may be because most of the Research Triangle Park area is, natch, research-oriented rather than production-oriented, and there are few plants to speak of. But dude. A warehouse for hazardous chemicals? Don't you think you might want to warn people about that?