WEST DEPTFORD, N.J. --
Some people are worried about potential health hazards in the wake of the refinery fire that raged out of control Wednesday in South Jersey. Images: Refinery Tank Fire The fire broke out Wednesday afternoon at the Sunoco refinery in West Deptford. The huge storage tank was filled with xylene, a chemical used to make gasoline.
Nearby residents were warned to stay inside while huge clouds of black smoke billowed into the sky.
The soot that seemed to have coated many neighborhoods in Gloucester County doesn't pose a health hazard, according to the local health department and state Environmental Protection Agency.
But residents were still concerned about the clean up.
Susan Shomo said in her 35 years living in Bellmawr she's never seen so such soot, and cleaning her hot tub proved to be a challenge.
"No one's going to go in it. I got to start draining it. Clean it. Start all over again," she said. "Hopefully, it's going to come off. You can see streaks coming down."
Despite the huge clean up everyone admitted it comes with the territory of living just blocks away from the Sunoco oil refinery.
Sunoco executives said their investigative team was examining how to prevent another lightning bolt from causing a major fire in the storage tanks that are grounded to prevent fires when lightning strikes.
"It is scary, but it's not something that you don't dwell on every day," said Sis Donnelly, of Westville.
Donnelly admits living so close to the Sunoco refinery can be a little unnerving at times. Wednesday was one of those days after lightning struck tank number 15 at the Eagle Point refinery.
It took firefighters three and a half hours to extinguish the roaring blaze in the 55,000-barrel tank. They used foam to contain it. A plume of smoke floated for miles but what the wind carried away wasn't dangerous or a toxic health hazard, officials said.
"You don't know what's in the air," Donnelly said, who had some of the soot at the bottom of her pool.
She added that her concerns are "if it's harmful to anybody, and what will it be like when I try to clean it up -- if it's going to smear, and what effect it's going to have on us?"
Sunoco executives tried to calm those fears.
"As with any soot and any smoke, it can be respiratory irritant if you're directly exposed to it," said Sunoco's Carol Sloan. "You would not want to ingest any of the soot. If anybody gets it on them, we would encourage them to wash it off. And, again, we would strongly encourage them to call us so that we can assist them through that process."
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said it has tested the air quality, and so far those tests have turned up negative, meaning there is no hazard in the air.
But a public interest group from Pennsylvania said don't take any chances and 'err on the side of caution'.
James Browning, of PennPirg, said xylene could be absorbed easily.
"If children are in a pool, they may drink it," he said.
Sunoco has set up a hotline for residents with concerns or those who want to file claims for property damage.
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