Worried Californians Purchase Gas Masks, Chemical Suits

March 18, 2011 6:05 AM

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BREWER, Maine (AP) — The owner of a military supply company in Maine says he’s been inundated with orders from people in California buying gas masks and chemical suits.

Maine Military Supply owner Frank Spizuoco says hundreds of gas masks are going out the door. He says people are also ordering related gear, including chemical suits, jackets, gloves, pants and boots.

He says the spike in sales started over the weekend. Officials in Japan are struggling to contain a nuclear power plant damaged by last week’s earthquake and tsunami.

Spizuoco says people are afraid of radiation from the damaged Japanese nuclear plant making its way to the United States.

He tells the Bangor Daily News it reminds him of the frenzy after 9/11. He calls it “pretty crazy.”

Worried Californians Purchase Gas Masks, Chemical Suits

Scott

There is no benefit in a protective mask if it is not fitted. A poor fitting mask DOES NOT work and can put the person using it in danger.
easy brown

well they are from california and vote democrat…

Cleary

Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

tylerjake

Californians need to be preparing for a major earthquake instead!

Shawn

They are. Their nuclear power plants are on fault lines.

will tell

No shortage of morons here

all_seeing_eye

that’s for sure…just take a look at Josh Smith’s comments…
Raymond

You should know, “will tell!” You posted Yourself! Have A Nice Day!

Josh Smith

Back off. People are right to be careful. They certainly can’t trust the gov or the all-biased media. Maybe all those nuke tests you mention have something to do with all the cancer and autism we have these days that didn’t used to be so much.

Ptolemy

Why is that? I enjoy my third eye and shrunken limbs.

benThere

As is typical of the vast majority of the news media, they make obsurd comments without doing adequate research into what they are talking about. I just turned off the news since Saturday Marning when I saw the same picture (of nothing of importance) for the 200th time since news of the earth quake emerged on the international scene. When they do report something new, most couch it in terms more designed to get ratings and inspire fear than in reality. I think many in the media would enjoy seeing real panic in our streets. My advice, if you don’t know what you are talking about, shut up until you can tell the real fqacts…

open-ur-eyes

Maybe u should take your own advise,because u obviously dont know the severity of radioactive isotope fallout. Ever heard of a thing called the jet stream. The same corporations that have stake in the nuclear industry have huge stake or completely control media sources.GE owns NBC. GE also built and supplies most of the equipment in the Fukushima plant and many others around the world. Why would they throw themselves under the bus by telling people the truth? They started off lying to us about the radiation levels in Japan. Why would they stop now? People please open your eyes!!!

Josh Smith

And if the radioactive material goes into the ocean, then wouldn’t that also go into the fish that are caught and put on the dinner table? Why isn’t the media telling people how to protect themselves and prepare?

John Smith

Your statement illustrates the exact mentality of people who are buying iodide tabs and protective gear. The radiation doesn’t just “go into the ocean and into the fish” It’s obviously more complicated than that. The ocean is a big place. you can’t just make over-simplified statements and expect them to encapsulate how things work. but the media does this everyday. they make over-simplified statements so the general public can understand.

jason h

then why don’t you enlighten us on the complexity of the situation instead of just making an unsubstantiated statement criticizing and unsubstantiated statement?
Cleary

Well look at it this way. If I have a garden hose and you’re up close, I can hit you with a good hard spray. Indeed, I should hit you with a good hard spray. But if you’re 100 feet away,, even with perfect aim, the spray will disperse, and I’ll be lucky to get you wet at all. Simple analogy, but it works. And really – you should be sprayed – and perhaps spayed as well.

quindan

The radioactive fall out will go into the ocean but it will be dissipated over time, area, distance, so likely hood of you eating a rad. fish is as much as you getting hit by a bolt of lightning (in my opinion).
Ferdinand the Bull

Jason and Josh: you two morons go on out and waste your money on these “life-saving” items. The two of you should be very happy together as the last two idiots on Earth.

oneguy

ASSClown, Keep drinking the kool aid.

beedogs

LOL

Jason

To each his own. Better to be prepared than not to be.

Jon

Exactly… Better to be prepared. Like me buying auto insurance even though I have never been in an accident in 40 years and drive very little now.
CommonCents

Jason, you’re a bit late on the ‘preparedness’ concept…

The idea is to stock up -before- any incident, not to react with every other fool.

Erin Cronenwett

Bravo! Exacty!

Smithers

So if I sprayed 500 gallons of Lysol in Japan would southern californians be able to smell it?

Joe Smith

No.

Next question?
Jack

ARE YOU A SOCK PUPPET?
Erin Cronenwett

Good point. But it would have to be alot more than 500 gallons.

Dash Riprock

Many people in Los Angeles – especially the natives – are afraid to go out in the rain and if the temperature drops below forty degrees, so why does this surprise anyone. Wimps.
Pacman

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!! Chicken Little (MSM) at his best. LOL!

Ptolemey

WHERE’S AL GORE!!!
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEeeeee!

rocky

I will be prepared and the rest of you will wither and die. Too bad. I have my mask ordered. Go believe there’s no threat. More for the rest of us when the plume arrives.

Tovarishch

LOL. Radiation is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. How will you know when to don the mask? Let us hope you are scarfing down that Iodine by the handful and you will croak from iodine poisoning…soon.
Joe Smith

Are you prepared to take down the black choppers, too? Got your weapons and ammo packed in pvc and buried out behind the woodpile? Did you empty the shelves of the 99 cent store? Yeah, you’ll have it made while we die. (Did you remember a can opener? Burgess Meredith forgot his on that Twilight Zone episode when he kept the bomb shelter to himself.) Smell that plume?
TheBruce

Funny, you ordered your mask, huh? A prepared person would have had it beforehand.

No worries, when it’s all said and done, you’ll be putting it up for sale on EBay once you realize that you weren’t in danger.

P.S. The “plume” has already arrived, you twit.

Craigster

Hey guys it is the liberal media’s job to support the President’s economic stimulus goals, this should add to the retail and Fed Ex employment numbers as jobs saved or created.. Another plus is that the liberal des in California are paying for their own freight this time.
Aaron L

As a Californian, I believe better safe than sorry. What’s the harm in being cautious? “Be prepared”. That’s why I stuffed an iodine-soaked rag in my respirator and dipped my chemical suit in lead-based paint. Plus I have a garland of garlic around my neck and am bleeding myself with leeches once an hour. We’ll see who’s laughing when the hair on your mutant second-head falls out…

TheBruce

Aaron, you forgot about the zombies. The ZOMBIES, man!

Loved your post. Put an ear to ear smile on my face.
Ptolemy

You forgot the garlic. Hang some garlic over your doors and windows.
Erin Cronenwett

Well thought out and you are better alive if the Shtf. Good for you and one point to the scoffer: you will be wishing you thought for yourself when Aaron L. is strong and healthy in 3 years and you all are dying of various reactions to the fallout you cannot see dumping on your heads and your owned media says “Oops, we didn’t know at the time because of __, it’s not our fault.” Better safe than sorry!

Userless Id

Loonies.

Joe Smith

Yup.

Josh Smith

Everyone knows that the left hides the truth by slinging insults saying anyone who dares question them is an idiot. What is really happening is that money is at stake, so they are willing to sacrifice your health to prevent a financial panic (which by the way already started – that’s why the G7 had to intervene in the money markets today).

They keep saying this is not chernobyl – that’s true, because chernobyl was just one reactor, and this is 6; so multiply chernobyl times six and you begin to approach the real situation. You also have a couple of other nuke plants fairly close to this one, so will they have to be shut-down when this one finishes the meltdown and the local radiation is unsafe for human operators?…add more consequences when that happens.

Japan just raised the emergency level today by one notch to a 5, but previously the US already said it was a 6 when Japan said it was a 4. A 5 is what happened in 3 mile island, but 3 mile island didn’t explode 4 reactors, so this is clearly not a 5. So that means that it just escalated from a 6 to a 7 apparently. 7 is the top of the scale (1 to 7), so it apparently is as bad as it can get, which multiplied times 6 reactors is not good. That also explains why today Japan said that it would accept technical help from the US. They were trying to fix it themselves, but they now have given up and realise that they are not able to recover it (= level 7, complete meltdown).

Should someone on the other side of the water and down wind be concerned that chernobyl times 6 is going to blow across the water and land on their vegetables, fruits, and/or go into the water and become part of dinner? Do you actually believe that the food supply is not in jeopardy? Common sense yields the answer, whether you call people idiots or not, they know a catastrophe when they see one.

And lets not forget the financial catastrophe that will result from all the down time of the #3 economy, Japanese businesses, all the mortgages and loans that will not be paid, all the companies world wide that will slow due to parts not available from Japan, sales that don’t happen in stores that don’t have Japanese goods to sell, even the taxes that won’t be collected as a result. This cannot end well.

Call us names. We don’t care. You can’t stop the financial tsunami that is headed our way, so your name calling won’t help your cause.

For everyone else, better safe than sorry. If not needed, then no harm in having. If needed, then extreme harm in not having.

Aaron L

So, I’m a conservative, and I think you’re a total loony. What does that do to your “the lefty insult-slinging” theory?
John Smith

It’s true the economic impacts will be immense and is yet to be felt. I’m more concerned with that than I am with radiation. But now you make it sound like you’re buying protective gear for economic fallout, not nuclear fallout.

Mostly everything else you say is based on assumptions, not data. But I’ll tell you what, once you receive the Geiger counter in the mail, take a reading from your roof top, post the picture on the internet and send me the link.
Ali

Amen.

http://thatmrgguy.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/worried-californians-purchase-gas-masks-chemical-suits-%c2%ab-cbs-los-angeles/ Worried Californians Purchase Gas Masks, Chemical Suits « CBS Los Angeles « That Mr. G Guy's Blog

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Jane Doe

That makes you a progressive.
gary

keep pumping that fear CBS, it’s good for business
and if you’re interested I have some poison pills everyone can buy for real cheap, these pills will kill you 20 minutes after you take them, so you don’t have to worry about radiation any more. $1,000 per pill, it only takes one.
please contact me for more info
TangentToWhat

I’ve lived in California for 68 years, and we don’t, and won’t have a radiation “problem” from this event. I wonder how we survived the 113 atomic tests conducted in the Pacific between 1946 and 1963? I wonder how many of these panicked knuckleheads blacken themselves by way of solar radiation at the beach each summer? California doesn’t have a radiation problem, it’s got a wimp problem.
NOMERCY55

THIS IS TO ALL YOU MORONS ON HERE,IF YOU BELIEVE WHTA THE GOVERMENT TELLS YOU,THEN YOU DESERVE TO BE RADIATED…I GOT MY POTASIUM IODIDE……

William Hofmeister

Saturating your thyroid with iodide tablets can lead to long term health problems. This might be a good idea if you are actually being exposed to high levels of radiation. It is foolish if you are not. It is absolutely not a case of better being safe than sorry.

Jerry L Kreps

No, it won’t, unless you are among the few who have an allergy to it. KI is only twice as toxic as ordinary table salt. The recommend does is two 65 mg KI tablets per day, taken 12 hours apart, for as long as Iodine-131 is present in your environment. Iodine-131 has a half-life of only 8.07 days, so a single contamination event will be a problem for only about 3 months. The other 200+ radioactive isotopes in spent fuel rods are another matter.

Jerry L Kreps

You’ve got nothing. Iodine-131 is only one of a couple HUNDRED radioactive isotopes present in a nuclear accident. KI only prevents the take up of I-131 by the Thyroid gland. The half-live of Iodine-131 is 8.07 days, so in about 3 months it will be gone. Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half-lives of 30 and 28 years respectively. KI does nothing to protect against them or the other 200 isotopes.

Charlie’s Neighbor

Hollywood is safe, we have warlocks here to protect us.

The MaD HaCkER

YEA! Warlocks! the proper responce to this problem!

NOMERCY55

DUHHH IM WINNING….LOL

TheBruce

LOL

Mike R.

I was a NBC specialist in the army, and this stuff always makes me roll my eyes. It took months of training to even barely understand how to use protective gear properly, and years to master it. Most people in the military were barely able to put on their masks effectively. Most people generally don’t have e fortitude or discipline to wear the suit or mask for the period of time you ned to in order for it to be effective either. We also had detectors to augment the protective gear juste so you knew what was coming and when.

MamaB

I had to dress up one time (yep, only once) in full chem gear for an Air Force exercise. Totally agree with you, Mike, that it’s not as easy as throwing the outfit on. I honestly don’t believe most people would have a clue how to use this gear, much less be able to tolerate it for very long periods of time. People would probably be better serving themselves by building up an emergency supply of food, water and other essentials so they can be prepared for any potential disaster.
Slim

And the sheep bleat. We are surrounded by the drones, they wouldn’t know an isotope it is bit them, God we get more rads in one dental visit than will occur from this.. I’ve come to believe a 160 acre compound in Wyoming or Kansas, 20′ high fence to keep people out is about where we are heading because people are too stupid to think for themselves much anymore.

Gas masks and potassium iodide jumping off the shelves, God forbid something occurs here with an empty suit in the Whitehouse.

Raymond

Good One, Slim! 5 Stars!!!!

Billy Gotepis

sounds like you werent very good at your job if it yook you months to set and tighten a gas mask….. derp

LTCB

I’m assuming you’re not prior service and don’t know jack about NBC warfare or how to survive it. I’ve done it 34 years. I’ve run many miles in full protective gear. Most people cannot do that well with it even in the military; and they’re trained how to do it. So, his point about civilians buying the protective equipment is valid. Just because you think you know how to do the task, does not mean you do. Try live agent testing and we’ll see if you’re still alive to tell the soldier he’s not too good at his job. You don’t have standing in this discussion.