EPA Officials Call Fricker Fire Site Safe

Eighteen days after a toxic fire erupted in an Anaheim agricultural supply warehouse, federal cleanup crews packed their gear and declared the site safe Wednesday. They left behind a battery of local and state officials to inspect the premises and pallets of scorched, water-damaged fertilizers and pesticides.

“We’ve removed all the material from the site that posed an imminent and substantial hazard . . . and have turned over this case officially to city and county agencies,” said Matthew B. Monsees, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the emergency Superfund cleanup operation.

“It is safe to go in and work right now,” Monsees said.

But city, county and state officials said Wednesday they were unsure when the Larry Fricker Co. could resume operations at the partially gutted cinder-block warehouse on State College Boulevard, site of what has been termed Orange County’s “worst” environmental emergency.

Chemical Contamination Tests

Meanwhile, about 70 Orange County Transit District employees and about 50 police officers and firefighters were being tested for chemical contamination after being exposed to the fire’s toxic fumes, authorities said.

And about 200 of the more than 7,500 people who were evacuated from neighborhoods in three cities surrounding the fire site staged an evening march on the Fricker warehouse to protest company operations and to draw attention to other potentially hazardous businesses in the area.

The fire, which Anaheim city officials have termed of “suspicious origin,” broke out on June 22 and smoldered in hazardous and potentially explosive materials while local firefighters and the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Strike Team battled for four days to extinguish it.

When the fire was finally brought under control on June 25, an evacuation order covering a nearly three-square-mile area was lifted. Two people were hospitalized for exposure to the chemical fumes and 40 others were treated at area hospitals for throat irritation, coughing and headaches.

Examine Warehouse Contents

On Wednesday, company officials were primarily concerned about getting in and operating again, said their attorney, Peter C. Freeman of Tustin.

“We don’t know yet when we’ll be allowed to go in,” Freeman said, adding that company employees were eager to examine the warehouse contents and repackage salvageable material.

Freeman predicted there would be substantial reconstruction costs for the roughly 30% of the building gutted by flames.

Monsees said Wednesday that cleanup costs under the federal emergency Superfund “were approaching $250,000.”

City building and fire officials, county health and agriculture officials and a state pesticide enforcement inspector from the Department of Food and Agriculture inspected the site Wednesday. State occupational health and safety inspectors also were expected to review the site before agreeing to permit workers to return.

Investigation Nearly Complete

City Fire Investigator Michael Doty said he expected to complete his investigation into the cause of the fire by early today. But county health officials and agricultural inspectors with the county and state could not estimate how long it would take them to inventory the remaining materials and determine what was salvageable.

Health authorities, meanwhile, said a battery of blood tests and breathing tests were administered Tuesday and Wednesday to about 70 OCTD employees who worked at the Anaheim Bus Operations and Maintenance Division, which is located next to the Fricker warehouse. About 40 firefighters and police officers who were on duty near the fire were tested earlier, said Philip Edelman, medical director of the regional poison center at UCI Medical Center.

While the tests on the officers did not show anything out of the ordinary, Edelman said it is difficult to assess the data because there is little to compare it against.

Two or three years from now, Edelman continued, the data from the tests will become valuable when compared with other information gathered.