Thomas Garrigan stood amongst neighbors early June 2 on Washington Street in Springdale, where they had gathered to watch two towering smokestacks come down.
Mr. Garrigan said he had gone about two blocks up the hill from property he owned on the same street — it was a good vantage point to watch the implosion of the smokestacks at the old Cheswick Generating Station, he said, and he thought it was far enough away from the blast site to be safe.
In testimony Thursday in the Court of Common Pleas, Mr. Garrigan said the group gathered to watch “ooh-ed and awe-ed” as the first stack fell. As the second began to come down, the sentiment was different.
“It was, ‘Those poor people down there,’ ” he told Judge John McVay Jr.
What happened during and after the June 2 demolition is at the heart of a current court battle to delay — and ultimately stop — the implosion of the remaining building at the old Cheswick site. The smokestack implosion, which officials have noted did not go exactly as planned, created reverberations, a massive air blast, and clouds of dust and debris that shot out into the adjacent neighborhood.
Another piece of the Cheswick site — the shorter, more open boiler house — was set to come down Friday. Mr. Garrigan and his neighbors, through a lawsuit and subsequent injunction — successfully had that plan put on hold.
Judge McVay had initially told the companies involved in the demolition not to place the explosives. In a hearing Wednesday, the companies said that would end up delaying the entire implosion. It has yet to be rescheduled.
The lawsuit names Charah Solutions, Controlled Demolition Inc., Grant Mackay Demolition Company, and Civil & Environmental Consultants.
Thursday’s testimony lasted about four hours and ended shortly before 5 p.m. That was in addition to the four hours of testimony on Wednesday. Proceedings will reconvene 9 a.m. Friday and likely last all day and carry over into next week as well.
Mr. Garrigan was among those who saw their homes damaged by the implosion and the power it expelled. A home that he owns on Washington Street — one he and his wife intended to remodel and sell or rent — had several windows broken or dislodged from the wall.
His son lives in a neighboring home on Pittsburgh Street that has been in the Garrigan family for decades. He said some of the original wainscoting was pulled from the ceiling, windows were shattered and their frames pulled apart, the front doorframe was pulled out of the wall, and the entire home was filled with thick layers of dust and debris.
It was a similar situation at Brittni Bair’s home, also on Pittsburgh Street. She said she and her husband, Travis Bair, and their then-10-week-old infant were told they would need to evacuate their home ahead of the blast, as it might not be safe for them. They were ultimately put up in a hotel from June 1-3.
The family hasn’t returned to their home since they left the night before the implosion, Ms. Bair testified.
She likened what she saw when she went to check on her home in the hours after the demolition to the Chernobyl meltdown.
She said windows had been blown out and thick dust covered every part of the home, inside and out. Walking, she said, sent plumes of debris into the air with every step.
“It looked like we were in a blizzard,” she said.
Ms. Bair testified that pieces of the top of the smokestack lay on her patio, and some had broken through her second-floor window and landed on her bed. Some window and doorframes were detached from the house, and some walls had large cracks that, she testified, have only gotten bigger in the months since.
Her family has been living in an Airbnb ever since, she said. They’ve had to buy new clothing and new baby supplies, as they feared what heavy metals might be in the dust that coated everything inside their home. She worries what any of it might do to her infant, now nearly six months old.
Attorneys for the companies involved asked few questions, most of which concerned the age of the homes, the value of the homes and their contents, and whether money could help pay for repairs or remediation or the cost of potentially selling the property at a loss.
Following the June implosion, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection completed a PA Blasting and Explosive Investigation Standard Report, where it concluded that Controlled Demolition, Inc. was responsible for extensive property damage, and damage to nearby utility lines, according to the lawsuit. They determined that nine residential or commercial properties had been damaged, issuing nine citations for those.
Six citations were issued for exceeding the air blast limit listed in the approved permit for the implosion, one was issued for failing to prevent flyrock, and another was written for causing damage to utility lines, the suit stated.
The first implosion followed months of decommissioning work at the site, which began shortly after Cheswick — Allegheny County’s last coal-fired powerplant — stopped making power in the spring of 2022. Kentucky-based environmental remediation firm Charah Solutions Inc. took over the site from GenOn and has been removing equipment and scrap.
Charah hired Grant Mackay as the main contractor, and Controlled Demolition, Inc. as a subcontractor, officials said. Scott Reschly, vice president of operations at Charah, said that Trifecta Services was another subcontractor onsite to assist, but that that company did not have “specific oversight” of the actual implosion.
First Published: September 21, 2023, 9:57 p.m.
Updated: September 22, 2023, 10:16 a.m.
