Biolab has a history of fires at facility [Video]

What you need to know:

Facility has a history of incidents:

Thousand of people remain evacuated from their homes after a chemical fire broke out Sunday morning at the Biolab facility on Old Covington Highway.

The building’s sprinkler system reacted with chemicals inside, sending potentially toxic fumes skyward.

Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDonald said they were forced to use water to put out the fire while knowing it would cause a continued chemical reaction.

She knows because she’s had to fight fires like this before at the exact same plant.

“I’ve been with the county for seven years, and this is probably the 3rd event of this magnitude,” McDonald said.

Channel 2 Action News was there for the last major incident in 2020 when a similar situation forced Interstate 20 to close for six hours.

A later investigation found the water reacted with a compound used to create pool treatment products and released chlorine gas into the air.

“You can look at it, we …