Fire at Biotech Firm Has Officials Jumpy Over Future Hazards : Public Safety: Warnings on burned equipment led firefighters to throw out uniforms, worry about possible contamination.

Sunday’s fire at Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp. on North Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla caused only minor damage to a research laboratory, but the incident underscored firefighters’ concerns about health risks generated by a fire at one of the city’s many biotechnology companies.

About 50 firefighters responded to the 4:45 p.m. fire, which was extinguished by about 5 p.m., according to San Diego Fire Department spokesman Danny Calderon. The fire was caused by a faulty motor in a laboratory refrigeration unit. No injuries were reported, but the blaze caused about $1,000 worth of structural damage, according to the department.

The fire also damaged the refrigerator that contained “chemical reagents used during laboratory tests . . . and purified antibodies from (cancer) patients from previous clinical studies,” Idec spokesman Richard W. Krawiec said Monday.

The chemical reagents and purified human antibodies posed no health threat to firefighters, and no hazardous materials were stored in the lab where the fire broke out, Krawiec said.

But firefighters had some initial tense moments when they arrived on the scene because federal- and state-mandated notices on the refrigerator warned that the unit contained products of human origin. Because of those warnings, firefighters initially assumed that they were dealing with a potentially life-threatening situation.

When the fire was out, firefighters were hosed down by a hazardous materials response team. They were also issued new clothing and the department made plans to monitor the health of the firefighters.

The additional precautions were canceled shortly after the fire was put out because department officials learned from a recently filed Idec report that the refrigerator contained materials that “were of minimal risk to humans,” said San Diego Fire Department Capt. Augie Ghio, who overseas the department’s Hazardous Incident Response Team.

The reports are mandatory for Idec and hundreds of other companies and research facilities that use, store or generate hazardous materials.

Although the business plans are filed with county health officials, fire officials use them to create reports that crews can read on their way to fire scenes. The reports, when used in conjunction with regular inspections, help crews make on-the-spot decisions on how to fight fires, Ghio said.

Equally important, he said, are safety warnings--such as those on Idec’s refrigerator--that “throw a flag up that there could be something that can cause a harmful effect to (firemen), the environment or the public.”

Firefighters heed those warnings, Ghio said, especially when they’re dealing with the increasingly complex chemical and biological threat posed by San Diego’s growing biotech and biomedical industry.

“It gives us cause to pause, because this is an area where not everyone can be a rocket scientist,” Ghio said.

When crews make incorrect decisions on how to battle a blaze, they can cause a fire to spread, generate explosions and create lingering health threats for firefighters and nearby residents, said John Eversole, chief of Chicago’s hazardous materials response team and chairman of the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs’ hazardous materials committee.

Information like that contained in the report Idec filed with county health officials earlier this year proves invaluable for crews who need to know “what is in a building, what the (industrial) processes are, what the chemicals are,” Eversole said. “When firefighters are well-informed, they can make intelligent decisions.”

Biotech executives, aware that their industry has grown increasingly complex, acknowledge that firefighters are likely to err on the side of caution when tough decisions must be made, said Gerard Spahn, the Salk Institute’s director of occupational health and safety.

“The guy on the truck coming to fight a fire doesn’t have a degree in chemistry,” said Spahn, a longtime member of the Chicago-based American Biological Safety Assn., which promulgates and disseminates information about biological safety issues.

Firefighters often assume that biotech firms and research laboratories are using vast quantities of potentially dangerous materials, Spahn said.

Firefighters “are not going to understand that the quantities (of potentially dangerous chemical and biological agents) . . . used in a lab are usually relatively small,” Spahn said. “All they see is cyanide or sulfuric acid.”

That lack of hard information leads to “panic or misunderstandings,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody in (biotech research) wants the Fire Department to be uninformed about what they’re up against.”

Spahn has invited Fire Department crews to tour labs at the Salk Institute’s landmark building in La Jolla “so we can show them where things are, what they’re going to be up against.”