Residents in one Northeast El Paso neighborhood were awakened Wednesday evening by police and firefighters after a chemical spill at a home at Bainbridge Avenue and McCombs Street forced residents to stay indoors, police said. 

Fire officials said chemical spills like this one are common this time of year because of the heat. 

The spill happened in a backyard shed around 3 p.m. Wednesday but was barely reported overnight, police said. 
Fire crews spent about five hours safely removing a chemical from the shed, and throughout Wednesday, people complained of being dizzy, nauseous and vomiting, officials said. 

The chemical spill was a highly concentrated form of malathion, a common pesticide that can be bought at any hardware store. The chemical became unstable because of the heat and caused it to eat through the bottom of the container, spilling into the shed, officials said. 

The owner said he threw the pesticide out, which caused the odor to spread to the neighbors. 
Officials said that people should buy only small quantities of those kinds of products for the job at hand because of these types of issues. 

"They'll give you a temperature of what not to exceed," said Esau Villegas, fire suppression technician. "Unfortunately, here in El Paso, we're going to exceed those temperatures." 

Also on Wednesday, firefighters battled a fire in a detached garage in Central El Paso, and overheating chemicals were also part of the blame, officials said. 

Official said it's crucial to get rid of chemicals properly, and to do so, the city has set up several citizen collection sites. 

List of those disposal sites (http://bit.ly/O0AA2a)