Cleanup of burnt ruin continues downtown
Pile of debris could disappear by weekend
Downtown Juneau's 6-week-old asbestos-contaminated debris pile could be gone this weekend.
Tim Henricksen of DJG Development questioned the extent of the asbestos hazard Tuesday and said he is set to begin supervising removal of the debris at Front and Seward streets, where a 108-year-old building burned in August. He said he hopes to get started this afternoon or early Thursday. He believes it could be clear in three days.
Fernando Rado, who works downtown, said he just wanted to see the pile gone.
"The sooner it's gone, the better," said Rado, who attended a media briefing about the cleanup Tuesday.
Removing floor tiles that are known to have asbestos sealed within will be the second phase of the project. That, Henricksen added, will probably only take a couple of days.
The building, a former hardware store divided and leased to commercial tenants, was torn down two weeks after an Aug. 15 fire started by workers patching the roof. The building is owned by Tom Huntington.
Clearing of the site stopped when a federal Environmental Protection Agency inspector asked to perform tests for asbestos. The EPA found there was asbestos in a roof-patching material and found that there were floor tiles containing asbestos that had been broken, releasing the fibers.
Asbestos, long used in construction for fireproofing and insulation, has been shown to cause lung cancer and the respiratory disease asbestosis.
Lower Seward Street from Front Street south could be closed this morning. When work begins, air samplers will be running as the debris is loaded into lined containers that will be taken to dumps in Washington state and eastern Oregon, he explained with Michael Patterson, the city's emergency services manager at a public briefing on the plans. The site will be kept wet to keep down the dust.
Workers inside the fence will wear the gear that will prevent them from inhaling asbestos fibers, as required by the EPA, Henricksen said. If the air samplers detect fibers that could be asbestos, work will be stopped so they can be examined microscopically to determine if it's safe to continue.
But he doesn't believe there is enough crumbling asbestos in the pile to pose the sort of health risk people in the community believe it has.
"We've come across a regulatory debacle," Henricksen said.
An EPA air compliance inspector in Anchorage, John Pavitt, has told the Empire the detected presence of crumbling asbestos fibers makes the health risk "significant," although he could not quantify it.
Patterson said he is more concerned about what is rotting inside the pile. He said the pile could be growing "mold and mildew and rats."