Marathon Officials Address Questions Regarding Fire, Evacuation Plans
DETROIT (WWJ) - Marathon Petroleum officials appeared before Detroit City Council's Public Health and Safety Committee Monday to answer questions regarding the recent fire at the downriver oil refinery.
Citizens wanted to know why some area residents were evacuated and others were not.
Downriver State Representative Rashida Tlaib urged that a more comprehensive notification plan be developed.
"What I don't want is that at 8:15 (p.m.) after we've been maybe exposed to something , then we decide to evacuate. Let me tell you how to evacuate my residents, and they did it during the black-out, it's door-to-door. We don't have time to save 9,000 people going
door-to-door. But, if ,boy, we could have external sirens. And what River Rouge is doing is looking into the text messaging system," said Tlaib.
Marathon Petroleum officials concedes there is room for improvement.
An external stake-holders meeting is scheduled for later this week to determine how the company's emergency response might improve.
