Well, they should be thankful it wasn’t the sewage tank. 
I’ve gotten gas spilled on me disconnecting the fuel line on cars. Runs down the hand to the armpit. Not pleasant, but it’s not painful.
IIRC Jet Fuel is oily? Similar to Diesel fuel? Jet fuel is different from gas? How caustic is it?
Would hosing the kids down with water be enough?
The response seems a bit extreme. But I’ve never come in contact with jet fuel. Raw Sewage seems more dangerous.
Jet fuel is essentially kerosene so yeah, oily, and can cause contact dermatitis. No fun in the eyes either. I had 20 years experience fuelling jets, and it’s not a fun bathtime experience at all…
They are getting really bold with those chemtrails!
I had always understood, like the expert quoted at the end of the article stated, that typically when a jet dumps fuel in an emergency it’s done at a high enough altitude that it evaporates before it reaches the ground. I assume in this instance since the emergency occured shortly after takeoff they weren’t able to reach such an altitude.
I wasn’t sure how much the fuel dispersed before hitting the ground.
I wouldn’t want to be drenched in any fuel.
Some droplets would be more tolerable. I’d still want a shower ASAP.
In the article, it says the minimum altitude for dumping fuel is 2000 ft, and this plane was at 2375 ft. But it also says planes are supposed to dump fuel over designated unpopulated areas, which this likely was not.
911 was called for a mass casualty haz-mat (hazardous materials) incident.
There was some time delay between the plane flying overhead & the fuel landing on the children/ground. Depending upon configuration of the school & playground areas the plane may have been out of sight (beyond a treeline or it’s view blocked by the school building) by the time the kids started to feel the fuel. Add an additional 30 seconds to realize it’s not just one kid who got hit by a flying bird but it’s a bunch of them before a teacher or aid pulls out a phone to call emergency services & the plane is now long gone. Even if a teacher saw the plane dumping fuel, no one was sure it was fuel at first.
Since this is unusual it might take some extra time to confirm that it was an legitimate emergency aircraft fuel dump & not something more nefarious the response was totally appropriate in my opinion.
Depending upon what one has been exposed to, haz-mat teams are prepared to give a full scrubdown shower, removing (& even destroying) clothing, if necessary. While there’s probably a spill kit on each fire truck, the full on haz-mat truck is a specialized vehicle, complete with their own crew of personal (usually; don’t know specifics of LACFD).
dupe
Fuel is regularly dumped in normal flights too to lessen the landing stress of certain aircrafts as some are not designed to land with much fuel in the tanks. But yes at high altitudes.
It’s basically the same as kerosene.
It appears the article was updated since I first opened it. I actually had to refresh the page to get the part about the minimum dumping altitude and that the plane was at 2375 ft.
Which makes me wonder what exactly the nature of the emergency was. Was it really so dire that the couldn’t fly a few miles west and dump fuel over the ocean? The Delta spokesperson they quoted state the flight experienced “an engine issue”. If it was only a mechanical problem with one of the engines, any twin engined plane should be able to fly just fine on one engine for more than enough time to fly over the ocean before dumping fuel. I don’t think that’s the sort of emergency that requires returning to the airport literally ASAP, but maybe the actual pilots here could weigh in on that. But I’m thinking that either the actual emercency was more serious than we realize and the Delta spokesperson didn’t have all the information, or the pilots have some explaining to do.
Decisions made on the fly (Ha!) are made with information known at the time. I’m now seeing it described as a compressor stall. Further, CBS is stating it was a flight to China (≈6500 miles, so a lot of fuel) that started dumping fuel at 8000’ over water.
At least there weren’t any steel beams in the path of the jet fuel: those kids would’ve been toast.
Are you kidding? Steel beams are like kryptonite to jet fuel. It would have turned to water on contact.
Just when I thought nuts with guns was as bad as it was going to get, NOW we start AERIAL attacks…
Diesel, kerosene and jet fuel(Jet-A/A1) are all very similar- diesel is somewhat less tightly refined than the other two, and jet fuel has an additive package, while kerosene is just straight distillate.
We had a kid who slept in a sleeping bag that had already been dried and aired out after his kerosene spill. And he still got burned. Large burns.
So I see this as partly over-responding, and partly appropriate responding. Kids skin is not as tough as adult skin.
Fuel is NOT regularly dumped in normal flights. Fuel is only dumped (if dumping is possible) when the plane needs to land very soon, rather than flying to its intended destination.
Many commercial aircraft are unable to dump fuel at all; it’s just not a built-in capability.
There are minimum altitude recommendations for dumping fuel. IOW, if you are able, you dump fuel above that altitude. But since fuel dumping is typically only done when there’s a need to get the plane on the ground Very Very Soon, it’s not unheard of for fuel to be dumped below that recommended altitude, i.e. during your approach to the airport. Sucks that some people on the ground got sick, but given that the alternative was a high risk of a flaming crash-landing that might have killed many of the passengers on the plane, it seems like they made a reasonable decision.
I’m sure there were busloads of personal injury lawyers at the curb of the affected schools! News reports that 60 people were treated by the fire department on-scene, nobody was admitted to the hospital.
The school district had cleaning teams overnight at the schools, scrubbing playground equipment, I guess. The schools are open today.
Kids with breathing problems are gonna be sick for a long time to come. This isn’t over, oh no, not at all.
~VOW
ATC recording and radar track of the incident. ATC asked if they need to go somewhere to dump fuel. Instead, A/C requested to be vectored straight to the runway. This is in contrast to the similar incident, also involving a 777 with a compressor stall, where the pilot chose to land heavy rather than dumping fuel.
To be fair he states in the notes that he’s missing a frequency.