When the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station’s northern blimp hangar caught on fire on Nov. 7, officials were gravely concerned about the possible health implications.
“In the beginning, I thought it was dire, right?” the county’s health officer, Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, said. “I thought like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s a large building that had a lot of different hazards in it,’ and I was thinking, of course, worst-case scenario, so that we can help protect individuals, or at least make sure that people would hopefully heed the guidance to minimize their exposure.”
Asbestos, lead and arsenic were detected in samples collected near the hangar the day it broke out, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The Orange County Health Care Agency began advising people to avoid touching any ash or debris from the fire.
Some Tustin residents left their homes for weeks out of concern, and schools near the hangar were closed. Asbestos debris from the fire was found throughout Tustin; a cleanup effort led by the city continues with more than 1,400 homes affected.
Now, health officials say the community was spared the worst case and the health risk from the hangar fire has been minimal. Despite their assurances, some residents continue to worry about possible ongoing exposure and say they hope the city will do more testing and cleaning.
Over time, Chinsio-Kwong said she’s been reassured by environmental health experts and the extensive testing that indicates a limited risk to residents near the hangar. Air sampling never detected asbestos, according to health officials. Dust samples collected at city-owned parks and facilities did detect some asbestos at higher-than-background levels, according to lab tests obtained via a records request, and city officials said they have been cleaned by its contractors.
“Time will tell with asbestos and exposures,” Chinsio-Kwong said. “Unfortunately, we don’t really know until about 20 to 30 years from now, but I am feeling a little bit more reassured with the experts and their guidance saying, ‘Again, it’s more of a chronic occupational exposure that really puts people at risk for lung issues long-term and not these one-times incidents.’”
Early concerns
The hangar fire broke out just before 1 a.m. on Nov. 7. Less than six hours later, the Orange County Fire Authority decided to let the fire burn itself out because of safety concerns if it were to collapse with firefighters nearby.
The Marine Corps Air Station’s two blimp hangars were constructed in 1942, and were two of the largest wooden structures ever built. Dubbed “Titans of History” by the city, they have been a beloved backdrop of life in Tustin for decades, even after the base closed in 1999. Future uses have long been debated for the historic hangar structures, which contained asbestos and lead, according to a 2020 Orange County Grand Jury report.
“This could be one of the large scale asbestos exposure incidents and there is concern for residents as well as anyone in the local area during the fire, and this immediate period following the fire,” Chinsio-Kwong wrote to a colleague on Nov. 8 in an email obtained by The Orange County Register. The county health officer said she would advocate closing parks and local schools “until I can get better answers on the magnitude of asbestos levels.”
The hangar fire spewed asbestos chunks into homes and parks. The county health agency told residents to not touch the debris and to wear protective gear if “there is a high risk of encountering asbestos.”
There were concerns if the hangar doors would hold up. A collapse could send more debris into nearby homes. Chinsio-Kwong asked Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Scott Wiedensohler in a text on Nov. 12 what the risk was.
“Confidence is pretty high that they won’t collapse,” he responded in a text back, adding steel beams hold the doors in place. “That said there’s always a chance. I’ve been playing that scenario through my mind all week.”
They didn’t collapse, and a contractor removed the door panels in December. Today, only four large concrete pillars remain from what was the north hangar. A contractor, over the weekend, sprayed additional tackifier to cover the debris remaining where the hangar once stood, “out of an abundance of caution in advance of potential future winter weather,” city officials said.
The fire smoldered for weeks after it began. Some residents moved away from their homes, staying at hotels or with friends or families. The Orange County Sheriff’s training academy closed for several weeks and the nearby OC Animal Care shelter kept the dogs and other animals inside, asking community members to step up and foster some to alleviate the crowding.
Air monitoring units were set up at more than 30 locations around the hangar, and no asbestos has been detected in more than 900 air samples, Christopher Kuhlman, a toxicologist and industrial hygienist at the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, said in December.
The highest concentration of fallout from the hangar is about a 1.4-mile radius around the hangar, Chinsio-Kwong said. City contractors for weeks have removed debris chunks from public rights-of-ways and the exteriors of people’s homes.
Results of testing the first week of the fire by the city’s contractor, Envirocheck, which haven’t been publicly posted, showed asbestos at higher than background levels at two city-owned facilities.
At Magnolia Tree Park, which is just under a mile northeast of the hangar, dust sampling taken on Nov. 11 detected asbestos fibers at above background levels inside the women’s restroom, on the floor and a changing table.
Testing also detected asbestos at above background levels on Nov. 12 at the Tustin Family & Youth Center – about two miles away from the hangar – on the preschool entry floor, a classroom west entry floor and a kitchen countertop.
Dr. Arthur Frank, who testifies in hundreds of legal cases a year related to asbestos and has advised officials in Tustin, said it’s unlikely that samples taken at those distances were from asbestos fibers released by the fire.
Kuhlman, who has been advising the city, also said you can’t know for sure if the asbestos in the dust samples came from the fire.
“The testing doesn’t distinguish between any specific source of asbestos, so you really can’t answer that question,” Kuhlman said.
The city closed parks on Nov. 8 and reopened them over the course of several weeks after contractors cleaned them.
Stephanie Najera, a spokesperson for the city said in an email that asbestos contractor ATI cleaned up city parks using industry-standard practices, including HEPA vacuuming and wet wiping of all horizontal surfaces and removing any potential asbestos debris. After cleanup, a certified asbestos consultant rechecked the locations before reopening.
The city, in its effort to get disaster aid from the state and federal governments, has told the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Service that the hangar fire has affected more than 12,000 people.
Those who live closest to the hangar say tests they have contracted for on their own continue to show the presence of asbestos and lead around their homes.
At a community meeting of concerned residents near the hangar last week, they spoke of their want for more testing, more extensive remediation of their homes than what’s been done, reimbursement for testing they paid for out of pocket and a plan to be shared for what will happen with the south hangar.
Acting City Manager Nicole Bernard, in a Dec. 29 letter to Cal OES, said emergency proclamations from the governor and president could lead to residents getting financial assistance for necessary expenses caused by the fire.
The city’s contractors have focused on picking up debris chunks around the exterior areas of homes. The city in December said it would start testing soil and the interiors of homes for asbestos and lead, but so far details for how residents can get their homes tested haven’t been released.
Susan Keefe, a resident near the hangar, said the contractors cleaning only the exteriors of people’s homes isn’t enough.
“They should be taking a top-down approach,” Keefe said. “They should be starting at people’s roofs and going down from there because otherwise, it’s just going to keep showing up again.”
If people heeded health advice, such as not touching fire debris, keeping windows closed and wearing masks and gloves, then their risk long term is minimal, Chinsio-Kwong said.
But she acknowledged the health guidance during the fire didn’t reach everyone. As the fire continued to burn, she saw people outside near the hangar not taking preventative measures.
“This is the learned lesson. We need to learn ways of really communicating in different ways to the community because not everybody listens to the news, not everybody listens to the radio, not everybody looks at the press releases,” Chinsio-Kwong said. “So, there’s got to be other mechanisms to get the word out.”
Frank said the hangar fire is not one people should spend the rest of their lives worrying about. At a late December community webinar, Frank said he considered being outside while the fire burned a “very low risk of exposure.”
If people should be worried, Frank, who is a professor at Drexel University, said he’d be the first one to go to bat for them in court.
“The likelihood,” he said, “of ever detecting asbestos disease from this (incident) is extraordinarily remote.”