Jet Fuel Dumped on Schools!

This is truly chilling.  Fortunately, there seem to be no serious issues from this, but still:

Delta Jet Dumps Fuel on Schoolchildren During Emergency Landing at LAX

A Delta Airlines jet flying from Los Angeles to Shanghai on Tuesday was forced to make an emergency landing at LAX — and dumped jet fuel on the city, including on children playing outside at Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Delta Flight 89 had taken off from LAX with 149 passengers and was en route to Shanghai when it turned around and headed back to the airport because of engine trouble.
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The pilots took the plane — a Boeing 777 — north over Malibu within four minutes after takeoff at 11:32 a.m., according to Flightradar24, a firm that maintains airline path data across the globe.
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According to Flightradar24, Tuesday’s flight never got above 8,000 feet and was at about 2,300 feet when it passed over Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy at 11:53 a.m. The plane showered jet fuel on schoolchildren below.

CBS News reported that three schools were affected:

The pilot reported a compressor stall in the right engine — damage that can happen through malfunction or when a foreign object such as a bird hits an engine. The damage can reduce engine thrust or lead to a fire in the worst cases.
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The fuel sprayed out in two streams from the wings and fell at midday in the city of Cudahy and nearby parts of Los Angeles County, about 13 miles east of the airport.
The vapor directly landed on three Los Angeles Unified School District campuses and about 20 others experienced some effects from the odor of fuel discharged at higher altitudes, the district said in a statement.
The fuel, described by fire officials as a vapor, caused minor skin and lung irritation to 56 children and adults but nobody was taken to the hospital and the only decontamination required was soap and water, officials said.
All the schools were cleaned overnight.

At least one observer caught the action in a video posted to Twitter:

Caught this in Bell Gardens over my house NEWS SAID IT DROPPED FUEL OVER AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN CUDAHY @KTLA @FOXLA @cnnbrk @UniNoticias @NBCLA @ABC7 @ABC @NBCNews @TelemundoNews pic.twitter.com/VG3HBpyYtn

— Sujey Hernandez (@SujeyHernandez) January 14, 2020

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating. There are questions as to whether the pilots needed to dump the fuel, or whether they could have avoided doing so, or done so over an unpopulated area instead.
Students returned to school Wednesday as usual.

This raises some serious safety concerns.  Was the fuel dump necessary?  If so, how safe is it to have these planes flying over populated areas?  What would have happened had they not dumped the fuel?  A fiery crash?  More harm than the fuel caused?   Statistically, how often is this sort of thing an issue?  There have been other questionable reports of things possibly being dumped from planes, and I wonder how often that happens.