BY BARRY HEALY
On February 15 last year, at least 500,000 litres of an unknown mixture of toxic chemicals exploded in the Perth working-class suburb of Bellevue, after a fire broke out at the "waste collection/recycling" facility operated by Waste Control Pty Ltd.
In December, the Western Australian parliament's Economics and Industry Standing Committee handed down the first volume of its report on the fire.
The report contains a nightmare list of 50 chemicals stored on the site, in alphabetical order from acetone to xylene. The biggest proportion of chemicals was perchloroethylene (PCE). Others included low-level radioactive waste, hydrochloric acid and mercury.
Management did not place a daily inventory of chemicals in the emergency canister. As a result, firefighters used millions of litres of water, instead of foam, to put out the blaze. As drums of chemicals exploded into nearby bushland, volunteer firefighters worked in the smoke without protective apparatus.
Heated PCE creates mustard gas, which, along with other poisonous gases, blew through Bellevue, remaining in the air for an unknown period of time.
Despite the presence of company owner Jeffrey Claflin and senior health and environment department officials at the "incident management" centre, firefighters were unaware of what chemicals they were dealing with until early on February 16. The information was provided by Contaminated Sites Alliance activist Lee Bell.
After receiving the information, firefighters began hosing down people in the vicinity. Toxicologist Peter Di Marco sprinted to Bellevue Primary School, 500 metres away, where polluted water had pooled just outside the fence. The school was not evacuated.
Most of Perth's meat is processed at livestock yards 200 metres from the site.
Immediately after the fire, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) authorised a cleanup and prevented an environmental assessment of the site. Casually employed cleaners "decontaminated" nearby properties with high-pressure steam hoses and collected chemical drums that had blown off the site.
Only after four days were suitable clean-up suits provided. The workers were told to burn the clothes they had been working in. One worker was hospitalised for chemical exposure. Other day-hire workers, protected only by paper masks, dug up the site's soil and trucked it away. No attempt was made at dust control.
The DEP issued reassuring newsletters to residents after the fire, claiming that air quality tests "suggest no concern for air quality off the site". Yet the "data page" in the March 23 DEP newsletter stated, "The off-site [chemical] concentrations are at normal levels, except when the wind is blowing from the Waste Control site".
Despite all this, the parliamentary committee found that the probability of health effects from the inferno was low and merely recommended the setting up of a medical register. It agreed with the WA health department and DEP experts that there was no dangerous impact on nearby land or rivers.
The health department and DEP have long "turned a blind eye" to the Waste Control facility, Tony Drewett, secretary of the WA United Firefighters Union told Green Left Weekly.
Opened in 1989, successive Labor and Coalition state governments were aware that the plant was constantly in breach of regulations. A one-month safety notice was served on Waste Control by the Department of Minerals and Energy in 1994. By the time this reached court in April 2001, the inferno had already occurred. An almost bankrupt Waste Control was fined $200,000.
After a serious chemical spill in July 1999, Premier Richard Court's Coalition government "discovered" that Waste Control had piled up 2250 drums of assorted chemicals. On DEP advice, the state government loaned the company $100,000 to ship 1000 drums to other states to be burned.
The loan was secured against the equipment on the doomed site, rather than the personal property of the owner. The Contaminated Sites Alliance submission to the parliamentary inquiry dryly commented: "Given that the DEP and [the Department of Minerals and Energy] were aware of the extreme risk of fire and explosion at the site, it seems curious that they would secure the loan against imperilled capital."
Waste Control built the stockpile back up to an estimated 2500 drums, when they ignited last year. Former Waste Control employees told the Contaminated Sites Alliance of the terrible conditions in the overstocked yard. Lurching on the broken concrete surface, forklift drivers dropped loads trying to squeeze through tiny corridors sandwiched between stacks of barrels. Exposed power lines hung just centimetres above the forklifts' height.
Claflin, operating a forklift against the workers' advice, once knocked the tap off a 1000-litre container of unidentifiable brown sludge, which remained on the floor for weeks.
The parliamentary committee did not call Waste Control workers to testify.
From Green Left Weekly, February 13, 2002.
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