14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, on Thursday, a storage tank leaked a noteworthy amount of a chemical compound used during coal washing into the Elk River. In just a few hours after the spill was discovered, a state of emergency was declared in nine counties in West Virginia.
What's more, people living in these regions were asked not to drink tap water, or use it to cook or clean themselves.
Think Progress tells us that, because of this ban on using tap water, things got a bit out of control at a Wal-Mart in the state's Kanawha County.
Thus, it appears that, once people learned about the state of emergency, they rushed to stores to buy as much bottled water as they could carry.
Store employees say that it did not take long for shelves to be cleaned up, and that, once clean water availability became questionable, tension began to mount.
According to one store cashier by the name Danny Cardwell, “It was chaos, that's what it was.”
By the looks of it, people were so dead set on getting clean water that workers at one Wal-Mart in Kanawha County decided to call in the police and have them assist employees while the latter were bringing in a new shipment of water and restocking shelves.
Thanks to the presence of police officers at this Wal-Mart store, no conflicts ensued.
As previously reports, the contaminated water that about 300,000 people in West Virginia have been asked not to consume or bathe in contains a chemical compound known as 4-methylcyclohexane.
Although not deadly, exposure to this compound can cause burning in the throat, eye irritation, non-stop vomiting, difficulty breathing and skin irritation, specialists say.
Recent information says that concentrations of this compound in Elk River have dropped from 2 parts per million to 1.7 parts per million. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States say that, at concentrations of 1.2 parts per million, the contaminated water would no longer smell or taste different than clean one. In order for the water to be safe to drink, however, its concentration of 4-methylcyclohexane would have to drop to 1 part per million.