Neal planned to distill old paint and solvents to recover usable chemicals and burn the residue in open pits. Directly across the street from Neal's operation lies the historic Nazareth Baptist Church. Smoke and fumes from the fires would often make members of church, founded in 1859 by the slave ancestors of today's members, cry and cough during services. Industrial Chemical Company was a low-tech operation that was ignored by state and federal regulators. At one point, more than 100 thousand drums of waste littered the site, many of the barrels rusted and leaking.
Residents say that exploding drums sounded like shotguns going off.
In 1979, a spectacular fire launched hundreds of exploding barrels into the night sky. Nearly 75 residents living within two miles of the site were evacuated. It was the first hint many of them had that the operation posed a threat to their health. Jack and Doris Lewis organized their neighbors to attend ThermalKEM's first licensing hearing before DHEC in February 1988. The Lewises had been living on Robertson Road for a decade before the company moved in about a half-mile away.