My company teaches safety to child care providers and during the hazardous materials class we teach about sheltering in place. We tell them that will or should only be evacuated if there are explosion dangers.

Now I'm hoping more people can get on board with this.

Why do you evacuate the public during an emergency? For most of us it's to get the public outside of the danger area. This could be because of explosion or contamination. What most of us don't know is that during an airborne emergency evacuating the public increase the chance of exposure to the chemical more 300 percent.

The Oak Ridge Laboratory conducted several experiments. In the modeled example a person staying outside would have been exposed to 400 parts per million of the toxic gas for 10 minutes. On the other hand a person closed up in thier home is exposed to only 60 parts per million for 10 minutes. It's clear that the benfits of staying inside far outweigh the chances of evacuation.

If the public takes even more precaution by increasing filtertration by putting plastic around windows doors and vents, turning off all air circulation devices and having even a small fan inside the "safe" room to pressurize the area it decreases exposure even more.

Some examples;
Labarre, La 1961- a 30 ton chlorine release immediately surrounded the houseof a young family. After about 15-20 minutes the father panicked and carried his young son outdoors. the rest of the family stayed inside. The family and father survivied, but the young boy died from chlorine exposure he received outside.

Texas City TX 1987- Accident at Marathom Oil refinery released a large amount of hydrogen fluoride (HF). About 3000 people evacuated. Of those 500 were treated for burns and respiratoory problems. People who stayed inside and refused to evacuate where not injuried. In addition pets and plants inside were not injuried but those outside died.

Staying inside does save lives. While there will always be a need to evacuate we need to be aware of the reasons we are telling people to leave. It should be for explosion dangers and some studies show that the radius is less then 2 miles.

I'm not doing to make myself right. I'm writing this because it's something I learned that will keep the public safe.