The Army wrongly assured council bosses that no asbestos was involved in the catastrophic fire at COD Donnington Ð one of the biggest military stockpiles of arms and equipment in Britain, the inquest heard.
The Army wrongly assured council bosses that no asbestos was involved in the catastrophic fire at COD Donnington Ð one of the biggest military stockpiles of arms and equipment in Britain, the inquest heard.
As a result, it took a week for the clear up operation to be launched, with workers in protective suits combing huge tracts of Telford, which had been showered with the deadly ash.
The inquest was told by John Sweetland, an environmental health officer at the then Wrekin Council Ð now Telford & Wrekin Council Ð that on the day of the fire, a Friday, they were told by the Army there was no asbestos involved.
On the Monday, he said, he spoke to the Property Services Agency, which looked after the MoD building.
“The officer advised the building did not contain asbestos, nor was it listed on the asbestos register,” said Mr Sweetland.
However a call later that day to the manufacturer of the building’s roof revealed it contained white asbestos.
Independent tests on debris samples were carried out, and by Tuesday four days after the fire preliminary results showed the samples contained white and the stronger brown form of asbestos.
Mr Sweetland said an em ergency clean-up plan was formed the following day.
“A crew of 60 people worked through the night on June 29 to wash 60 miles of roads and pavements”, he said. “On June 30, the removal of debris began. By July 2, the majority of debris had been cleared.”
Peter O’Keefe, a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence, said a Board of Inquiry subsequently investigated the fire.
He said the board found asbestos in brake linings stored inside the plant. He said it was more likely the asbestos came from these, than the roof.
Mr O’Keefe said lessons had been learned from the fire. “A system was now in place that mapped MoD buildings containing asbestos and could be accessed instantaneously.
The inquest was told that fire crews fighting the blaze were also unaware of the involvement of asbestos,
Paul Raymond, from Shropshire Fire and Rescue, said: “The major concern for officers on the ground was not whether there was asbestos or not, but the quite large number of toxic and radioactive chemicals that we knew were in the building.”
He believed the fire service found out about the asbestos via the council.
