Fire Damaged Asbestos Containing Buildings in Randle Street, Surry Hills
The Surry Hills fire that appeared on the news during the May of 2023 involved the efforts of the Police force, Firefighters and the Forensics team. After the dust settled, worries of fire damaged asbestos material arose, and EnviroX Consulting was contacted to recommend their expertise and to supervise the asbestos removal. EnviroX Consulting issued a prior clearance and make safe clearance of the buildings, however as per the report, not all the asbestos containing material was removed from the buildings.
Asbestos air monitoring of the adjacent areas, including the excavators that were used, was conducted every day as the estimated 1300 tons of asbestos containing materials was removed. Safework NSW attended the site regularly to further supervise the removal of asbestos containing material & they were impressed at EnviroX’s level of understanding of the removal process and the knowledge of all the members of the team.
Although a large portion of material was tipped as asbestos containing waste, there were some materials that were able to be washed, sampled and recycled; these include large ironbark timbers, metal materials and some brickwork. The owners of the building even discussed using the lift motors and other large metalworks as decorations within the new hotel.
During the duration of the removal, investigations from the police, firefighters, cadaver dogs and forensics squad continued.
Every person and every search dog was instructed to obey the Licenced Asbestos Assessor’s recommendations on entering and exiting the asbestos contamination zone and were taught to use the decontamination unit. The cadaver dogs were washed before they left the asbestos contamination zone with further focus on washing their paws.
After the bulk of the asbestos containing material was removed, further asbestos removal detailing from Class A removalist continued for a few days. A multitude of dust swab samples, soil samples, clearance air monitoring and other samples were taken by a licenced asbestos assessor for the asbestos clearance report. The whole process of asbestos removal and clearance took approximately two weeks.