Tanaz Rahin and her mother Farri Rahin of Charleston, W.Va., drove across town to the Kroger in South Charleston, W.Va., to find water following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply to eight counties on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014. Workers pump 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, out of a 48,000-gallon tank at Freedom Industries, a chemical storage facility, in Charleston, W.Va., on Friday, Jan. 10, 2014. The White House has issued a federal disaster declaration in West Virginia, where a chemical spill that may have contaminated tap water has led officials to tell at least 300,000 people not to bathe, brush their teeth or wash their clothes. The West Virginia National Guard planned to distribute bottled drinking water to emergency services agencies in the nine affected counties. About 100,000 water customers, or 300,000 people total, were affected, state officials said. Charleston resident Niru Parikshak loads up the back of her car with bottled water Thursday Jan. 9, 2014 in Charleston, W.Va. . Sam's Club and every retailer for a twenty mile radius sold out of bottled water after a chemical leak Thursday morning up river from the WV American Plant on the Elk River forced the water plant to shut down. AP Photo/Charleston Daily Mail, Bob Wojcieszak (AP) - Schools and restaurants closed, grocery stores sold out of bottled water, and state legislators who had just started their session canceled the day's business after a chemical spill in the Elk River in Charleston shut down much of the city and surrounding counties even as the extent of the danger remained unclear. In requesting the federal declaration, which makes federal resources available to the state, state officials said about 300,000 people were affected. Federal authorities are also launching an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the spill and what caused it, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said in a news release Friday. Shortly after the Thursday spill from Freedom Industries hit the river and a nearby treatment plant, a licorice-like smell enveloped parts of the city, and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued an order to customers of West Virginia American Water: Do not drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes with tap water. The chemical, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, leaked from a tank at Freedom Industries and overran a containment area. Freedom, a manufacturer of chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries, said in a news release Friday that the company is working to contain the leak to prevent further contamination. President Gary Southern also said the company still does not know how much of the chemical spilled from its operation into the river. It also was not immediately clear exactly how much of the chemical spilled into the river and at what concentration. The tank that leaked holds at least 40,000 gallons, said Tom Aluise, a state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman. "We're confident that no more than 5,000 gallons escaped," he said. A certain amount of that got into the river. Some of that was contained. Agency officials do not know how long the chemical had been leaking, Aluise said in a telephone interview. There was a breach in a concrete wall that served as a containment area to prevent spills from leaving the storage site, he said. Our understanding is it's not an especially toxic material. It's not dangerous necessarily to be around," he said. Other symptoms include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, reddened skin, itching and rashes, according to a news release from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Freedom Industries will be responsible for cleanup at the site, Aluise said. State law requires companies to report any industrial accidents within 15 minutes; those who fail to do so can face a fine up to $100,000. During a press conference with Tomblin, the chief of the state Department of Environmental Protection's Homeland Security and Emergency Response office said the mandatory reporting law might not apply in this case. I don't believe that this facility is subject to the industrial reporting requirement. We are looking at that," said chief Michael Dorsey. The water resources regulations require that they do report, but it doesn't give a specified time period. Freedom reported the leak just after noon Thursday. The smell from the spill was especially strong at the Charleston Marriott hotel a few blocks from the Elk River, which flows into the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston. The hotel notified guests Friday that they would be moved to another hotel in Huntington, about an hour's drive away. For instance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was planning to deliver more than a million liters of water from nearby Maryland, but the first shipments were not expected to arrive until Friday night. State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey warned residents about price gouging on water, ice and other items, calling it "just plain wrong" to inflate prices and encouraging those who've seen such practices to report them to his office's consumer protection division. Although the governor noted that the water advisory extended to restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and other establishments that use tap water, state public safety spokesman Lawrence Messina said Friday that he wasn't aware of any hospitals closing and that medical centers "seemed to have adequate water supply, at least for the short term." The Charleston Area Medical Center hospital chain was getting help from an unaffected hospital in Hurricane, W.Va., to sterilize equipment. That chain, which includes CAMC General, CAMC Memorial and CAMC Women and Children's Hospital, had canceled all elective surgeries, though emergency surgeries were to proceed, said Dale Witte, a spokesman for the hospitals. Those hospitals have enough water to last at least 48 hours, and officials are working with authorities and other hospitals to address other water needs, Witte said. Of the system's 6,000 employees, those who don't deal directly with patients were told to stay home to minimize water use. Witte said four patients were kept overnight for symptoms similar to what the chemical can cause, though it was not clear if those symptoms may have been caused by other issues given that it's cold and flu season, Witte said. Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington, Pam Ramsey and Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.