The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it has begun working with state officials to identify and remove hazardous materials released by a spectacular fire at a Maywood industrial park that forced the evacuation of hundreds of people.
The three-alarm fire erupted about 2:30 a.m. June 14 at a plastics facility, then spread into a metal recycling yard, triggering explosions as metals and chemicals ignited. It was finally extinguished the following day. The inferno gutted the industrial warehouse in the 3500 block of Fruitland Avenue, sending a thick plume of noxious smoke over the region. Solid and hazardous waste will be separated, categorized and loaded onto trucks for transportation to approved disposal facilities, regulators said.
The EPA has identified arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury as "contaminants of concern" at the site. The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery -- CalRecycle -- is working with EPA to remove the debris.
Air monitoring at the location has so far detected no potentially dangerous volatile organic compounds, according to the EPA. The agency does not anticipate needing below-surface excavation as most of the ground surface at the site was covered with concrete or asphalt prior to the fire. After waste removal is completed, the EPA said it will evaluate the site conditions to ensure that no hazardous wastes remain. The fire affected Gemini Plastic Enterprises and two other facilities -- Panda International Trading, a scrap metal recycling business, and SOKOR Metals, an electronics recycling company.
