If there exists a cancer concern, forget it, according to Wheeling Fire Chief Larry Helms.
If remediation can cleanse the three acres at the end of 19th Street in East Wheeling to the extent guarantees can be made that those three acres do not pose risks to firefighters who will, hopefully, be sleeping there during a 24-hour shift?
Well then, OK.
But.
“Listen, I have told my people that if there are environment issues that can’t be cleaned up, we’re not going forward with this project. No way,” Helms insisted. “I would have members spending 24 hours a day there, and if they are at risk? No way. That’s not happening.
“But we don’t know the environmental factors yet, and that’s the whole reason why the purchase option was necessary because that gives us access to the remediation that can cleanse the three acres at the end of the 19th Street in East Wheeling property to do those things,” the chief explained. “All the information we are going on now is some city paperwork and what the property owner is telling us, but we want to ensure safety for everyone involved.”
Most recently, it was the Penn-Wheeling Closure plant, but there were a few others, too, through the property’s history. Today, it is vacant, bricks are piled, and zero improvements have been made for years.
“I am aware of the history of the 19th Street property, and I am concerned, but that’s why I want to make sure we do our due diligence to find out what’s there and whether it can be remediated? This is a property that has been an industrial property for at least 150 years,” Helms said. “I’m pretty sure a lot of the asbestos has been removed from the property because there’s paperwork that shows there has been, but I’m also sure there’s still some there.
“But if that’s all it is, then OK, let’s make sure that’s removed, and let’s move forward,” the chief said. “But if there is something else there? And who knows because of all of the different businesses that were on that land through the years. That’s why this process is necessary.”
Another good reason for Helms’ concern is the history of the city and how the environment was discarded and trashed by one industry after another.
“(Penn-Wheeling Closure) was still operational when I first started with the fire department, and I don’t remember going there for a lot of calls back then unless someone got injured,” Helms recalled. “But we also have to think about how records were kept through the years, and the fact that we really don’t know everything that’s been used down there for whatever business was there.
“But through this option that Council approved, it gives us the chance to send in the people who are going to test the property so we can see what’s there,” he explained. “That testing will take place soon because the option is only a three-month option. The wheels are in motion now, so we should know something soon.”
The purchase price is $150,000 with another $195,000 for the 19th Street property owner, Frank Calabrese, if the city gains a federal brownfield grant. The fire chief, however, said other sites still are under consideration at this time.
“Maybe most people aren’t aware of this, but we are still looking at other sites, too, just in case,” Helms said. “I am not at liberty at this point to say where those sites are, but I can say that we’re in a wait-and-see with others because the better ones have purchase options on them already.
“As far as the cancer concerns, it’s a very real thing that we are being exposed to very different things when we fight a residential or commercial fire because of what we use more of these days than what we did just a few decades ago,” he continued. “And it’s weird cancers that our people are getting and, it is because of what they are experiencing these days. We used to go into fires without our (breathing equipment), but that was OK when I first started because it was cottons and linens. Now? Plastics and foams, and those two things are toxic when they burn.”
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