| Cleanup complete at site of Foundry fire By Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff
he campus moved quickly to clean up the remains
of the Foundry after an April 25 fire destroyed the building. Physical
Plant director Pat Daly said the former location of the structure
has been covered with six inches of loam and seeded for grass.
Although any fire site needs to be secured for investigative and general safety purposes, the Foundry site contained asbestos that had covered some piping and an old-style kiln that Art Department students used to work on metal, so campus staff moved quickly to clean up the area. Within days of the blaze, the Alterations Department built a structure in which to remove the asbestos safely. "We set up a containment area," said Michael McGoldrick, maintenance working foreman in Alterations. "The project took about four days: a day to build a little house around it, and a few days to rip it out and clean it up." McGoldrick is part of the University's in-house asbestos removal team, which has received off-campus training and certification by the state Department of Labor and uses specialized equipment to handle the material. Once all asbestos was removed, the University hired Associated Building Wreckers of Springfield to demolish what remained of the structure, remove utilities, fill the hole with dirt, and seed the lot. Demolition was done the Friday before Commencement and the restructuring of the site was completed by May 31. |
