Blaze site gets clean bill of health

THE Environmental Protection Agency and the Radiological Protection Institute have given a clean bill of health to the Cork industrial site ravaged by fire last week.

The State environmental agency said extensive air quality monitoring of the site over the past week has ruled out any risk to residents or workers in the Blackpool area.

The RPI, meanwhile, said an inspector visited the Millfield industrial estate on Thursday and was satisfied there was no threat of radioactive

contamination at an unoccupied unit in the industrial park.

A number of agencies, including the EPA and the Health and Safety Authority, are in discussions with the private owners of the Millfield estate to complete the clean-up of the site after last week’s fire. Agreement has to be reached on the planned disposal of asbestos-contaminated waste at the site.

Dust clouds which followed the demolition of the former five-storey Sunbeam plant, a listed building which partly collapsed during the fire, sparked public health fears about asbestos fibres contaminating the air quality in the vicinity.

EPA inspector Jim Moriarty said yesterday that 12 monitoring points, including public access routes to the site, were set up in the days following the fire at the Refond textile plant. He said none of the samples, analysed at EPA laboratories in Inniscarra, indicated any presence of asbestos fibres.

Upwards of 300 people involved in projects with Northside Community Enterprises Ltd are scheduled to return to the business park on Monday. Founded 10 years ago and providing community-based services, the company offers new opportunities to the long-term unemployed through employment, training and enterprises.

At the peak of the fire, civil defence teams were drafted in to assist fire brigade personnel, as concern increased over the risk of radioactive contamination from a locked-up building known as Unit 90. However, the RPI said yesterday a company, licensed by the institute, had vacated the building in February 2002 and all of its industrial equipment was accounted for in a subsequent inspection of the company’s new premises.