Richmond Toxic Fire: Mayor addresses issues after community follow up

RICHMOND — City of Richmond leaders will be holding an informational meeting for community members to ask questions regarding the toxic fire at a plastics facility that sent several carcinogenic chemicals into the air and caused an evacuation order two weeks ago.

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The city of Richmond, Indiana, held a meeting at Fairview Elementary School from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. as a follow-up on the toxic fire that concerned many community members throughout mid-April.

News Center 7 previously reported on the breaking news that multiple fire departments from Indiana and Miami Valley were responding to a structure fire called in shortly after 2 p.m. on NW F Street, Richmond Fire Chief Tim Brown stated in a press conference. As the call came in, Richmond firefighters stated that they could see the smoke from their station over a mile away.

When first responders arrived, they found a semi-trailer filled with an “unknown type of plastics” fully involved in flames, Brown said. As the fire burned, it spread to other properties and posed a challenge for firefighters.

“We only have one access into where the fire was. All the other access roads were blocked by piles of plastics and other semi-trailers,” Brown said. As a result, firefighters took multiple days to extinguish the flames, all the while several cancer-causing chemicals were detected in the plume of smoke emanating from the site.

>> PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Richmond Toxic Fire: ‘Smoke is definitely toxic;’ Carcinogenic chemicals found in testing

Since then, the city took a portion of the land to incentivize the owner to recoup losses from the city, residents, and other individuals affected by the incident.

The owner of the company was held “fully responsible” for the damages after the owner was cited multiple times prior to the fire that the placement of plastics and semi-trailers posed a fire hazard.

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A class-action lawsuit was also filed in Wayne County Courts Thursday against the man who owned the plastics recycling facility located at 308 NW F Street, and his company Cornerstone Trading Group LLC.

The lawsuit alleges that for several years prior to the fire, the property owner “failed to take any affirmative steps to remedy the unsafe ultra-hazardous conditions that existed within the Industrial Facility and surrounding grounds.”

As a result, residents suffered adverse health effects due to noxious fumes and hazardous materials. This included inhalation of toxic smoke, headaches, breathing complications, headaches, dizziness, skin rashes, and chest pain in addition to the “great physical, emotional and psychological pain and suffering,” the lawsuit stated.

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During the meeting Tuesday night residents tried to get information about the fire.

Marshell Raby from Richmond said the meeting wasn’t what she expected. “The question and answer session wasn’t necessarily what I expected out of this,” Raby said. “I do feel like it may just be to allay some fears versus actually answering the hard questions.”

The EPA said the air quality is fine and their air sampling results showed no asbestos.

Mayor Dave Snow told us the city is tracking the costs associated with the fire but doesn’t have a total number yet.

We asked the mayor what would he say to residents who think that the city is partly liable for the fire.

Snow replied by saying:

Sure, I understand that some of the confusion that’s been associated with that. So the business owner broke his entire site into three parcels. I don’t know the reason for that two of those parcels, he failed to pay his property taxes. So those went to a tax sale. That’s typical of any property if you don’t pay your property taxes, going into a tax sale. When that happened, the city acquired them with other parcels, which is common when parcels like that are within city boundaries. And so either way, a government entity was going to end up holding those parcels as the property taxes were paid. So we took them with some other parcels for nominal fees of that process of tax sale. But we don’t own the buildings, we don’t have the materials on the site, we are not responsible for the materials on the site, he was made well aware that although that had happened through the tax sale, he was still responsible for his business.

—  Mayor of Richmond, Indiana Dave Snow

The mayor said the cause of the fire is still being looked into.

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