Although a fire in a downtown building Thursday caused fear of toxic levels of asbestos in the air, officials said Baton Rouge is in no immediate danger.
Firefighters contained a fire on the eighth floor of the 13 floor former state Department of Education building downtown at 2:15 p.m., about two hours after it broke out, said Baton Rouge Fire Department spokesman Howard Ward.
Officials have yet to determine the cause of the fire. No one was inside the building when the fire began and no one was hurt.
Ward said the main concern surrounding the fire was the asbestos remaining in the building, which was scheduled to be torn down within the next month.
William Davis, a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police, said the city delayed the building’s original destruction date of Sept. 6 because of the discovery of remaining asbestos.
Davis said state police and BRPD officers blocked off a “shelter area,” several streets surrounding the building, for a few hours and evacuated the neighboring Galvez building and the State Library.
Jeffrey Meyers, Department of Environmental Quality emergency response manager, said officials blocked off the area because they were afraid tanks of propane near the top of the building may have exploded.
Ward said he is not sure what materials inside the empty building actually caught fire, but it possibly could have been wooden wind braces or the plastic material surrounding the entire building.
Ward said firemen used the building’s water system to fight the fire, but had to connect the hoses a few floors below the actual fire.
DEQ quickly responded to the crisis and began monitoring the air around the building, he said.
Meyers said initial monitoring showed the air quality around the building was fine, but DEQ collected air samples to send to a laboratory for analysis and testing just in case.
“We feel that there was probably no major impact by asbestos,” Meyers said. “We don’t anticipate any problems.”
Results from the air samples, which DEQ took from the ground level and the top of a neighboring building, will probably return Friday or Monday.