I got called by a consulting firm I occasionally work with on Saturday night (really late). They desperately wanted me to fly to Phoenix on Sunday morning to help them respond to a mercury spill at a high school there. They know I have a lot of experience in unique emergency response. I'm full time employed by one of the studios in Hollywood (my boss is a mouse). I had Monday off for President's Day, so I said OK.
What happened is some high school students were in class in a chem lab and found a really old bottle of elemental mercury (about 3 pounds in a 100 ml glass bottle). They started playing with it, and then took the bottle from the lab to the boys locker rooms and started chucking the stuff down on the floor where the gym lockers were located, having great fun. They then divided it up into a few soda bottles and a few of the boys went to other classes to show their friends their new "toy". The stuff got spread around a 65 acre campus by 1,700 students. We and the US
EPA dogged down the stuff on campus and recalled all the students to turn in their clothes and shoes for testing. We also are decontaminating the houses of four of the boys who had the stuff. The US EPA and my old client responded, and I worked 16-17 hour days the last three days on the cleanup. I think I'll take the money and buy a big screen TV with the surround sound!
I had to leave today for hard appointments tomorrow. I took a vacation day today from the mousehouse.
The cleanup will probably be completed tomorrow with re-occupancy of the school Thursday. You can read about it here, sorry, I forgot my camera
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/02/17/20090217abrk-contaminationupdate.html
Anyway,