By Rob Wheary and Mallory Szymanski
News-Item
MOUNT CARMEL TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Sandra Pelus was sitting on a marble bench in her Diamondtown backyard Monday night when, out of nowhere, she started itching and “burning all over,” her eyes and nose began to run, and an overwhelming pain entered her chest.
“It was probably the worst experience of my life. I thought I was going to die,” she said by phone Wednesday afternoon.
Pelus, who suffers from asthma, said she called 911 immediately, telling an emergency dispatcher she thought she had been exposed to tear gas.
Turns out she had been experiencing the effects of OC gas, or pepper spray, defined in an online medical dictionary as “an aerosolized form of oleoresins from capsicum, highly irritant to the skin and mucous membranes.”
What happened?
Mount Carmel Township Chief of Police Brian Hollenbush said his department’s emergency response team was administering the gas under the watchful eye of Sgt. Todd Owens, a certified instructor from the Mount Carmel Borough Police Department, on Monday night. On a mountain overlooking Diamondtown, the routine training exercise went a-rye after a simple change in environment, Hollenbush said.
Since the team was near a residential area, they first performed a test to see which way the wind was blowing by setting off a smoke grenade. The smoke drifted out further into the woods, giving the impression that it would be OK to continue the training exercise since no township inhabitants would be affected by the gas.
That impression was wrong.
The wind shifted direction, Hollenbush said, a change that went undetected by police officers. When the pepper spray was released, instead of blowing into the woods, it blew into Mount Carmel Township.
Residents react
Pelus said she placed two calls to 911, and an EMS responder came to her home at 255 Pennsylvania Ave., Diamondtown. She said he
offered to take her in an ambulance to a nearby hospital, but Pelus refused, noting that much of the gas had lifted within 15 to 20 minutes.
In between coughs, Pelus said by phone Wednesday that she still wasn’t over the ordeal. Just to be safe, she has undergone a chest X-ray, which came back clear.
“I was very shocked that I would be gassed in my backyard in Mount Carmel Township,” Pelus said. “Country air turned to toxic air.”
Bill Stief, of Mount Carmel Township, also had an unpleasant experience Monday night.
While driving his motorcycle down the Wilburton Mountain, Steif says he noticed a “haze on the roadway,” which he drove through. His daughter was along for the ride, and it didn’t take long for them both to begin exhibiting symptoms of exposure.
“As I drove through it with my daughter on the bike, our eyes started to water and burn, so I quick pulled over and went into a convenience store there to get cleaned up,” Stief said.
It didn’t take long for Stief to realize what he was dealing with; he had worked with OC gas for 12 years, having been an instructor. He didn’t approve of what happened Monday night.
“This was a full-blown OC grenade that was shot off, Steif said. “It just seemed irresponsible to me.”
Damage control
Owens said that once the pepper spray was released, police “immediately stopped deploying the munitions” and Hollenbush “alerted proper authorities.”
Hollenbush said fire departments were called to the area after Northumberland County Communications received multiple reports from residents who had been exposed to the gas.
Still, Owens points out that if the gas would be used in town during a real-life situation, the concentration released would be much more intense than what was experienced Monday.
Time to make a change
Owens said the Diamondtown mountaintop police used Monday night has been a training range since 1994, and this incident was the first of its kind.
Still, “one problem was one problem too many,” he said.
In response to the unwelcome occurrence, Owens said police are looking for a new place to train.
“We are working on moving our chemical munitions training to a different location, away from the local area ... possibly Fort Indiantown Gap,” he said by phone Wednesday afternoon.
Copyright 2009 News-Item