‘Collateral damage.’ Frustrated Finley WA residents want relief from warehouse fire smoke

Finley residents are not getting the help and action they need as the huge Lineage cold storage warehouse has burned in their neighborhood for nearly 40 days, they said at a town hall meeting Wednesday night.

Smoke from the fire has deteriorated the air quality close to the plant to a level considered “hazardous,” and air quality has been listed as “unhealthy” some mornings at a monitor permanently installed last week at the Finley middle school.

Residents at the town hall described health problems they linked to the smoke, including a child who wakes up in the night with nose bleeds and vomiting and a teen with pneumonia. Other residents said they had migraines, bronchitis and frequent doctor visits as the smoke has exacerbated their asthma or other respiratory issues.

One woman said her animals were avoiding drinking from water troughs sitting in the smoke.

Officials, including at the Benton Franklin Health District, have recommended staying indoors when the smoke from the fire is at its worst, filtering indoor air and wearing K95 and K100 masks when they must be outdoors in the smoke.

But masks and filtering systems are not in the budget of people living on Social Security payments and others with low incomes in the rural Finley area, residents said.

Action by the Benton Franklin Health District and Benton County Commissioner Will McKay was immediate.

Mask giveaway in Finley

On Thursday they were working to gather about 5,000 respiratory masks, with some available to hand out Thursday evening at a drive thru event in Finley.

It was scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Game Farm Road entrance to River View High School south parking lot.

The county may have about 1,000 masks to give away. The health district had 1,200 and it was sending workers to Tri-Cities hardware stores to buy more off the shelves.

Masks also were being requested from the Washington State Department of Health.

The health district expected to have at least one to two masks available per person at the Thursday drive thru, with ongoing distribution after the event if there are more masks available.

Homebound Finley residents may call 509-460-4205 to request masks.

Those most at risk from the smoke are those with lung or heart disease; diabetes; people who are pregnant or 65 or older; people who lack good access to health care and people who work outside, said Dr. Steven Krager, interim health officer for Benton and Franklin counties.

The health district also hopes to obtain box fans and filters, which can be combined to clean indoor air, and air cleaners, for people affected by the smoke. The district’s goal was to have information to hand out at the Thursday event.

The health district also is posting information, including answers to frequently asked questions, about the fire and health issues at bfhd.wa.gov. It also will be setting up an email account to allow Finley residents to reach out to health district specialists with their questions.

Local government officials to ask Lineage to reimburse the costs of providing help to Finley residents.

Lineage a no show at meeting

To the frustration of Finley residents and public officials at the Wednesday evening town hall, Lineage declined to participate, either by sending a representative in person or having one available virtually.

Finley seems to be collateral damage to Lineage, said one person.

“This has gone on way too long,” said another.

One Finley resident said the issue residents were facing might be taken more seriously if the 12-acre building had been burning for more than a month in a part of the state considered more “important,” such as the state capital.

Marc Stevenson, a retired chemical engineer, was at the town hall and later told the Tri-City Herald that while his home has not been affected at four miles south of the Lineage site, he can see the plume of smoke and described it as about a half mile wide and dense.

A woman at the meeting said that there were times when the smoke is so thick she cannot see the fence 50 feet from her backdoor.

An employee at Sandvik, now called Alleima Special Metals, on Highway 397 in Finley said that his office is sometimes so smoky he has had to leave work.

More should to be done to put out the fire as it continues to smolder and flare up, several people said, especially as children will soon be out of school and will want to play outdoors.

Firefighting limitations at warehouse

Scott LoParco, Benton County Fire District 1 chief, said even with its tallest fire truck, it cannot reach much of the center of the building with water.

Firefighters put about 4 million gallons of water onto one area, only to have the fire flare up again there, he said.

Theoretically water could be dumped into the center of the building by helicopter, but it would not make it through the 30 feet of peas, corn, carrots and potatoes to the bottom of the building, he said.

The building still has pristine boxes of frozen vegetables and its east end untouched by water and on the west end chunks of frozen corn remain.

“I feel your pain,” he said at the town hall meeting, saying he wakes up to smoke within his house.

The smoke often is worse in the morning as smoke that has pooled overnight starts to move, said Erin Hockaday, the health district’s senior manager of surveillance and investigation.

Representatives of the health district and the Benton Clean Air Agency said residents can check air quality at enviwa.ecology.wa.gov/home/map but that just observing the haze in the air can help tell them when they would be better off indoors.

Air checked for chemicals

Air also is being checked for hydrogen sulfate from decomposing food and volatile organic compounds from plastic melted in the fire, with no results of concern so far, Hockaday said.

The health district is concerned about wastewater runoff from fighting the fire eventually contaminating well water and is asking Lineage to collect samples and send them to be tested.

Lineage has hired a company to start tearing down the outer areas of the building, which will help firefighters access areas in the center of the building where the fire is still burning.

It estimated about 10 days ago that cleanup would take 60 days.

But Finley residents said they are skeptical that the debris that is 30 feet deep and the remains of the huge building can be removed and hauled off in a matter of months.