Remnants of tire fire still remain

TORRINGTON — Saturday, May 3, will mark one month since the five-alarm fire that destroyed a warehouse filled with Toce Brothers tires on property owned by O&G Industries on the south side of Torrington. The neighborhood still has the appearance of a disaster zone with blackened twisted metal on private property adjacent to the fire, burned pieces of wood and black oily debris littering lawns, sides of houses, sidewalks and gardens. Most of the black, rubber fire byproducts that flowed into the Naugatuck River through a nearby storm drain and out a drainage pipe at the East Albert Street bridge have been carried away by heavy rains and the fast-moving current of the river out of Torrington and through Thomaston, Waterbury, Naugatuck and Ansonia, then, after its confluence with the Housatonic River near Shelton, into Long Island Sound between Stratford and Milford.Questions persist about the black, oily debris.On April 3, the night that the fire was still burning, representatives from the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) said that there was nothing they would consider toxic in the byproducts from the tire fire. Waterbury residents found black, oily debris in their town, and it can still be found on the banks of the Naugatuck River in Torrington and downstream.The primary question on the minds of the residents finding debris in and near the river, on their property in Torrington and on the paws of their dogs when they walk them around the neighborhood where the fire took place is: “What is this black stuff?” Although DEEP officials have said that the debris poses “no significant risk to human health or the environment,” they said they have not tested the material and therefore cannot say, with any certainty, what it is. When asked in an email about what the material is composed of and how DEEP knows that there is no threat to humans or the environment, Communications Director Dennis Schain stated, “There were no specific tests conducted on the rubber residue because of the body of knowledge that exists about residue from tire fires.”When asked about this body of knowledge, Schain mentioned years of study and research regarding tire fires that can be found with a “simple Google search.” A simple Google search revealed massive amounts of information, studies, analysis, and data collection, including tests on the byproducts of tire fires. Sources of this information include the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Center for Disease Control and reports from environmental engineering contractors.Multiple reports online discuss the “significant risk” to humans and the environment from byproducts of tire fires, which include pyrolytic ash and smoke.These byproducts are known to contain heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and zinc, and organics such as benzene and toluene.Reports also conclude that rubber fire byproducts, including the particles in the smoke from the original fire, have a high mutagenic emission factor, meaning that they can cause genetic damage, resulting in “an increase of genetic disease in future generations and contribute to somatic cell diseases, including cancer, in the present generation.” When asked how or why the byproducts from the rubber fire in Torrington would be different from the material analyzed and described in the Environmental Protection Agency reports, Schain pointed to “the relatively short duration of the fire in Torrington and the relatively small number of tires consumed.” However, much of the analysis of rubber fire byproducts that indicate the high cancer-causing properties and capacity for genetic mutation resulted from the burning of two tires for 220 minutes, or less than four hours.The fire at the warehouse leased by Toce Brother to store hundreds of tires began shortly before 8 a.m. on April 3 and was not completely extinguished until 5 a.m. on Friday, April 4, 21 hours later.