One Instance When Red Tape Brought a Rapid Response : Mix-up: The work crew only wanted to keep students away from the pile of harmless debris. But the ‘DANGER--ASBESTOS’ warning on the tape got unexpected attention on Back to School Night.

Construction workers at Hughes Middle School in Long Beach were just trying to be cautious when they strung the plastic barrier tape around a pile of construction refuse on the school campus. Unfortunately, they made two mistakes.

The first was that when they ran out of the bright yellow “CAUTION” tape they usually use, they found some tape left by another contractor and decided to use it instead. That tape was red and announced in bold letters, “DANGER--ASBESTOS,” even though there wasn’t asbestos anywhere on the site.

The second mistake was putting up that alarming tape on Oct. 12, the day that a thousand parents were expected for Back to School Night.

The results should have been easy to predict. Alarmed parents who read”DANGER--ASBESTOS” wondered if little Jason or Heather or Dustin was being exposed to deadly, cancer-causing asbestos. Pretty soon, three government agencies were involved in the investigation, as were school district officials. And even two weeks later, Hughes Principal Dan Woitovich still hasn’t heard the last of it.

“It was just an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Woitovich said, a bit wearily. “There was no asbestos. We certainly wouldn’t subject our students, or ourselves, to any hazardous situation.”

Woitovich said the red tape was removed the next day.

But at least one of the parents who saw the tape--and who subsequently contacted several state and local environmental agencies--said she was worried.

“They say it was just a mistake, that there was no asbestos,” said Mio Tanaka, whose 12-year-old son, Duncan Reid, attends the 1,400-student school on California Avenue. “But how do we know for sure?”

Joe Rasch, health and safety manager for the Long Beach Unified School District, explained that the only asbestos removal involved in the yearlong, $2-million project at Hughes was from the boiler room area, and that was done during the summer break.

The construction project at Hughes Middle School is one of 10 school renovation projects under way in the district. At Hughes, which was built in 1949, the renovation includes installing new gas and water lines, new electrical and heating systems and making the school more accessible to disabled students.

When asbestos removal is necessary, it is handled by a special subcontractor, Rasch said.

“We were quite surprised to hear about it,” Rasch said of the tape incident. “It wasn’t even the asbestos people who (put up the tape). They were long since gone.”

Rasch said he was assured by an inspector for the South Coast Air Quality Management District that the asbestos warning was simply a mistake. Officials at the Long Beach Health Department and the California Health Department also were involved in the case, but were unavailable for comment.

The contractor whose workers put up the “DANGER--ASBESTOS” tape, meanwhile, seemed surprised at what a stir the incident had caused.

“We’ve heard a lot about it, from all over,” said Gene Cavecche, president of Cavecche Engineering and Construction in Los Alamitos. “We figured it was better to put up that tape than to have some kid slip and fall down. It was just unfortunate that that was the only kind of tape around.”

Cavecche added that in the future his workers will “absolutely” use the right tape.