Authorities on Monday night ended a shelter-in-place order for more than 90,000 people east of Atlanta following a weekend chemical plant fire that sent a massive plume of dark smoke into the Georgia sky and led to complaints about a strong chemical smell and haze. The smell had spread to Atlanta by Monday, prompting firefighters to use detectors to check the air quality in various parts of the city, Mayor Andre Dickens said. The Rockdale County Emergency Management Agency lifted the shelter-in-place order and the evacuation zone after Environmental Protection Agency readings for the area showed things were safe.
It said businesses could operate as normal on Tuesday. Northeast of Atlanta, Arynne Johnson took her Great Danes outside in Suwanee on Monday morning when she encountered a foggy air that “slapped you in the face,” she recalled. “I used to work at a water park, and it felt like walking into a pool house,” she said.
Closer to the source of the fire, officials said chlorine, a harmful irritant, had been detected in the air from the fire at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Georgia, the Rockdale County government said in a statement Monday. The plant is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Atlanta. People in the northern part of Rockdale County, north of Interstate 20, were ordered to evacuate on Sunday, and others were told to shelter in place.
Sheriff’s office spokesperson Christine Nesbitt didn't know the number of people evacuated, though it cov.