Illnesses After Fire in Newhall Prompt Doubts, Lawsuit

For two weeks last summer, firefighters battled a sluggish blaze in a small mountain of what appeared to be sticks and grass at a Newhall recycling center. Smoke hung thick against surrounding hills. Ash rained on a nearby neighborhood.

Seven months later, at least five of the 200 firefighters who fought the blaze have not returned to work, their blood found laced with lead, arsenic and a dozen other poisons.

Fifty-four other firefighters have filed workers’ compensation claims, complaining of breathing problems and chronic fatigue. Neighbors and nearby office workers are wracked by headaches and sleeplessness, inflamed livers and phlegm-filled lungs.

After a preliminary analysis, county health officials told the Board of Supervisors that the scores of chemicals found at the scene posed “no significant exposures” that would threaten the health of the firefighters or people nearby. Their test results have been turned over to an independent toxicologist for review.

But state health experts and toxicologists contacted by The Times said the county hasn’t done enough to rule out the danger. No testing, for instance, has been done on a nearby neighborhood of poor Latino laborers. One toxicologist, the physician for many of those sick, believes the fire represented a major public health risk.

Those still sick after the fire believe the cause of their illness is indisputable, and many are confused and angry with the county’s response. They say they fear the mountain of waste piled on the site of one of California’s oldest oil refineries hid a stew of dangerous chemicals.

Faced with a toxicological whodunit, they want answers.

Manny Santana lives a few hundred yards from the site of the fire, in a neat, small blue house that has been in his family since the 1970s. On the August night last year when the fire broke out, he was sleeping with his windows open, a box fan sucking in the cool night air. When he awoke, smoke hazed the air in his home, soot dusted the walls and a chemical stench filled the room.

Santana is a tall, fit man, a vegetarian who works for the phone company and says he has never missed a day of work. Today, constant pain streaks through the side and back of his head. He is always tired. His blood tested nine times above normal levels for arsenic.

“People need to know,” said Santana, who filed a class-action lawsuit against the county last week. “This fire is a major disaster.”

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The first report of smoke at Santa Clarita Greenwaste came at 7:39 p.m. on August 28.

When Engine Company 73 arrived, firefighters found a smoldering mountain of debris nearly 4 acres wide and 90 feet deep, tucked into a gulch off an industrial area of Newhall called Railroad Canyon. The dump is licensed for nothing more hazardous than yard waste.

For the next two weeks, more than 200 firefighters battled the stubborn blaze as it slowly wormed its way through the pile. None wore a self-contained breathing apparatus, which would have been required in a house fire or a chemical fire.

Bulldozer operators worked in the middle of the smoking mass, pushing debris to and fro to allow water to penetrate to the fire’s center. Workers said they found paint cans, pieces of plastic tubing and construction material. Rank-and-file firefighters slogged through murky water that some called blacker than coffee.

All told, they would dump at least 19 million gallons of water on the blaze, which was finally contained Sept. 11.

Almost immediately afterward, firefighters began complaining of headaches and hacking coughs--typical symptoms after many fires. But for some, the headaches didn’t go away. In October, records show, top staff at Los Angeles County Fire Department headquarters first became concerned about a “problem brewing” because of the fire.

“There were a lot of people exposed and I want to make sure that those who need treatment get it, however I want to avoid a mass testing if possible,” wrote Marguarite Jordan, the Fire Department’s chief nurse, in an e-mail obtained by The Times.

But within a month, county health workers decided the concerns were serious enough to merit just such testing. A total of 173 firefighters, including members of other state and local agencies and county jail inmates who fought the blaze, volunteered to take blood and urine tests. The tests, done more than two months after the last day of the fire, turned up 20 firefighters with abnormally high arsenic in their urine, 14 with indications of damaged livers and one person with both.

After a preliminary review, county health officials decided the results weren’t cause for alarm. In interviews, they said such abnormalities could be expected in any testing of a large population. Certain seafood can cause a false spike in arsenic levels. And a martini or two can trigger indications of liver damage the day after consumption.

To further assess the fire’s risk, county health workers also analyzed air, water and soil samples--tests that showed trace amounts of some 40 dangerous chemicals.

Minute quantities of feared carcinogens such as benzene and arsenic were found. So were small amounts of chemicals that cause birth defects or long-term health problems: lead, phenol, acetone and others.

Still, with the exception of a handful of substances, the chemicals were well within workplace and drinking-water safety levels set by the federal government, the county says.

The current owner said he knows of no toxic substances in the dump. Besides its use a century ago as a refinery for benzene and kerosene, the site has also been used to dispose of earthquake debris. Other green-waste recycling companies have also done business there.

“It was never a drop-off to bring in hazardous waste. I would have been against that,” said Hank Arklin, who rented the property to Santa Clarita Greenwaste in 1996.

County officials said they have yet to see any information that would suggest the potential for major harm. Their biggest concern, they say, is healing sick firefighters and calming unnecessary fears.

“Very frankly, my recommendation is to get this thing closed out so you can give people permission to get well,” said Shirley Fannin, the county’s disease control director. “There’s so much anxiety about chemicals and environmental things. It’s usually based on gross, gross ignorance. It’s just a lack of knowledge.”

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At the heart of the firefighters’ concerns is Dr. Gary Ordog, the head of the department of toxicology at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita.

Ordog has seen more than 100 people who were affected by the fire: Los Angeles County and city firefighters, state Department of Fish and Game personnel and residents of the area.

He said his tests have shown extremely high levels of numerous toxic substances, including arsenic, lead and phenol. He has diagnosed many as suffering from chemical hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver caused by chemicals in the blood.

Ordog has gone so far as to order chelation treatments on some of his patients, a serious procedure in which dangerous toxins are leached from the body. Several county health officials privately voiced concerns about the practice. They say that Ordog is doing the treatments on patients whose blood-lead levels are well below the level at which such treatments are normally done.

Ordog defends his technique, noting that his patients had symptoms consistent with lead poisoning. He said many of them had multiple heavy metals in their system, such as arsenic, mercury and lead, requiring aggressive treatment.

He has no doubt that the fire caused the maladies he’s treating.

“When I get 100 people with a similar range of chemicals and they match chemicals found at the fire site, I have to say there’s something going on,” Ordog said. “This could be a serious public health threat.”

Ordog is not alone in his concerns. State officials and several toxicologists and environmental health specialists contacted by The Times criticized the county’s testing as incomplete and insufficient. Nearly all said the testing done so far is simply not conclusive enough to make any valid determination about the toxic effects of the fire.

The chief concern is timing.

The soil, air and water tests were conducted in the very last days of the blaze. The urine and blood tests were taken two months after the blaze, long enough for all of the substances tested to have disappeared from the blood and entered bone, where they are difficult to detect, toxicologists said.

The fact that any toxic chemicals remained in the environmental samples when they were taken is an indication that they may have been present in far greater concentrations in the first days of the blaze, environmental health experts said.

“At the moment [the tests were taken], it was safe, but that doesn’t tell you what was happening there before,” said Jim Cone, head of occupational health for the state’s Department of Health Services. The testing is “a non sequitur. It doesn’t help.”

In addition, county officials didn’t test the debris pile until two months after the fire, taking three small samples from the massive, 10,000-cubic-yard pile. By that time, the operator had carted away nearly 67 truckloads of the burned debris. That material was never tested and is now buried in a nearby landfill.

Lab workers from the county Fire Department’s Health and Hazardous Materials Team who conducted those tests say they don’t consider them sufficient to rule out the possibility of contaminants in the pile--even though top county officials used results from the tests to conclude that the lead levels found should “not account for significant lead exposure either to the firefighters or the surrounding community.”

“I don’t think three samples of a pile that large is conclusive as to what’s in that pile,” said Jerry Munoz, who coordinates the Health and Hazardous Materials Team.

Still another worry is whether the fire harmed those who live nearby. The county has done no testing at a nearby park or neighborhood for lead or other toxins that could have been carried by smoke.

Several people who live in the area said they felt ill in the days after the fire. They said smoke filled the air and ash fell in their yards.

“There was a strong smell, and you see the smoke a little bit in the air,” said Basilio Cobian, 47. “There was nothing we could do about it.”

Chris Ridout, the attorney who filed the lawsuit last week, said a large number of people in the area could have been affected by smoke and fumes from the blaze. The suit seeks damages from Los Angeles County, Santa Clarita and Chevron, which previously owned the site.

“We’ve looked at the tests and the only thing that can explain the levels we’re seeing would be toxics of some kind,” said Ridout, who has filed other environmental-contamination lawsuits.

The Los Angeles County Firefighters Union, Local 1014, asked state health officials to review the same soil, air and water tests made by the county.

In a report to the union made available to The Times, the state concluded that the firefighters’ illness was “likely” related to the fire and its results.

There are also concerns about the environmental cost. Ken Wilson, a state environmental specialist with Fish and Game, said much water seeped into the ground or ran toward the Santa Clara River, home to an endangered fish.

“What is undoubtedly happening is this stuff has leached down--and it’s being washed downstream toward wells,” Wilson said. “Maybe you won’t find anything, but it’d sure be good to check to see what’s happening. This is pretty toxic stuff.”

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For their part, county officials stress that their conclusions are only preliminary. They have handed over all test results to Joseph Fedoruk, the medical director of UC Irvine’s Occupational Medicine Clinic and a board-certified toxicologist.

Although his report is not complete, Fedoruk said he is sure the fire contained more than simple yard waste.

However, he said he has yet to see any tests that indicate toxic exposure. He has also treated some Los Angeles city firefighters who fought the blaze, and found no evidence of heavy-metal exposure, though one still suffers from smoke exposure.

Lead levels found at the site aren’t alarming, Fedoruk said.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” he said.

While Fedoruk indicated he may do further tests, others cautioned that the mystery of the fire and its effects may never be solved. So much time has passed since the blaze that even the best testing may not provide solid answers.

“Reconstructing [the fire] would be difficult,” said Lawrence Fine, head of the hazard evaluation division for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “You might not bring any clarity to the situation that now exists.”