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Praxair is Sued Over Fire, Cleanup

Posted on: Thursday, 8 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

Sep. 8--A business owner and downtown loft resident have sued Praxair over the explosive, hours-long fire in June that left debris scattered around the city, including some that contained asbestos.

The lawsuit, filed by Bruce Hopson and David Bruno in St. Louis Circuit Court, says that the June 24 explosions and fire released asbestos fibers throughout the city and that Praxair failed to adequately notify the public.

The suit also seeks class action status, meaning it could eventually include as many as 5,000 residents and business owners, said one of the lawyers who filed the suit, David Dolan.

Dolan said Bruno is a building owner in the Locust business district and Hopson is a resident in the downtown loft district.

The suit says Praxair "carelessly and recklessly generated, handled, stored, treated, disposed of and failed to control and contain the asbestos and other substances generated at the PDI plant, resulting in the release of asbestos and toxic substances."

The suit also charges that Praxair said publicly that it had hired a contractor to clean the three blocks around the property, then expanded the cleanup without public notice and conducted cleanups in the middle of the night "in no apparent uniform, organized and/or systematic manner."

Dolan said that the suit is not intended to imply that Praxair was intentionally concealing information or trying to avoid responsibility.

"The purpose of the lawsuit is to ensure that everybody's interests are being protected and the cleanup is being done correctly and completely," Dolan said Wednesday afternoon.

Praxair spokesman Nigel Muir said that he was unaware of the lawsuit and could not comment on it.

Muir said that the Praxair site is 95 percent cleaned up. Praxair has also finished cleaning up debris in surrounding areas, with the exception of areas where property owners have not given Praxair permission, Muir said.

Debris from the explosions and fires was blown north, away from residential areas, Muir said. Praxair, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the St. Louis Division of Air Pollution Control have identified the area affected by the debris plume as a roughly triangular, 193-acre area, he said.

Sandra Knepp, bureau chief of environmental health services for the St. Louis Health Department, said the city is certifying the cleanup work as Praxair completes each area. She couldn't say how much of the affected area has been cleaned up.

"They are making progress but they could be making better progress," Knepp said Wednesday.

Knepp said the city never lost sight of the need to remove and clean up the asbestos.

"It has been ongoing," she said. "It may have faded from the public eye after the explosion and the initial cleanup. But we have been working on this since asbestos was first identified as an issue."

Muir said that the plume boundaries do not mean that residents and businesses inside the boundaries are at risk, and said not all of the debris contained asbestos but was cleaned up as if it did.

Five of seven air samples tested by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in the week after the fire did not show the presence of asbestos.

Two more readings were below the regulatory limit for indoor exposure and posed "no significant risk" to the public, said Gale Carlson, an environmental public health section chief at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The agency had recommended using water to wash any fibers that had accumulated into the storm sewers. When wet, Carlson said, the fibers would not become airborne.

On Wednesday, Carlson cautioned that concern about short-term asbestos exposure is sometimes "overblown," and that small amounts of it already are in the air from truck braking systems and other sources.

Sam Simon, the city's director of public safety, said Wednesday that "my understanding is there is no asbestos, at least in the immediate or adjacent areas, that we need to be concerned with at this point." Officials in the city department monitoring the asbestos cleanup following the Praxair explosion were unavailable for comment.

The suit, which names Praxair, Praxair Distribution and Chouteau facility manager Jeffrey Grimes, seeks more than $25,000 for testing and remediation and punitive damages.

By Robert Patrick and Ken Leiser

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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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