LACKAWANNA, N.Y. — Eight years later, and to any driver on the Hamburg Turnpike, it would appear as if nothing is missing from the old Bethlehem Steel site.
But attorney Jeanne Vinal and the neighbors just feet away from where the fire broke out on Nov. 9, 2016 still remember.
A jury unanimously found that both the owner, Great Lakes Industrial Development, LLC, and the tenant, Industrial Materials Recycling LLC, were guilty of negligence and gross negligence in the devastating fire that ravaged the property and had lasting impacts for neighbors nearby.
Both LLCs are owned by David Franjoine, Dennis Franjoine, and Robert Zuchlewski.
“This part is such a relief because from now we go forward without this denial of responsibility continuously for all these years,” Vinal said.
Testimony in court showed that "the defendants were storing roughly one million pounds of ground plastic and plastic to be ground, in a building with no sprinklers or smoke or heat detectors and no alarms," according to Vinal Law.
Evidence also showed that the owners had prior notice of lightbulbs exploding before the fire started and that manufacturer labeling stated that they should not be placed over combustible materials.
In a release provided to 2 On Your Side, it states that "The proof showed that at 6:55 am Paul Kulniszewski, the then plant manager, heard glass break at the other end of the plant and looked to find it and did not discover it and then joined all the other employees who were at a meeting in a closed trailer. The plant was unheated and had no running water. At approximately 7:09 a.m., Paul Kulniszewski saw fire at the top of a pile of Gaylord boxes and yelled fire. The employees ran out. When the fire was first seen, it was 10 feet high above the top box, and in the center of the stacks."
It continues to say that "Despite the danger, two IMR employees, Jeremy Schoepflin, and Paul Grawunder, described by plaintiffs’ attorney as heroes, grabbed the hand-held fire extinguishers and crossed 32 feet across the pile, on elevated pallets, to get to the fire. Other employees ran to get more handheld extinguishers and handed them up. The fire decreased substantially but they could not put it out before the fire grew to such an extent that they had to evacuate. At that point, at almost 7:15 a.m., Jeremy called 911."
When the fire broke out, it sent a thick plume of spoke 30 miles south of the site, spreading a cloud of ash all across the neighborhoods in its path.
“The smoke came in even houses where all the windows were closed,” Vinal said. “So many people lost all their furniture, had to strip their houses. People had asthmas that came that they didn't have or aggravations that became really symptomatic afterwards and then also other kinds of injuries like cancers and earlier deaths.”
The jury found the owner and tenant responsible, saying they failed to equip their property with fire safety and emergency response materials, as testimony found they had no sprinklers, smoke or heat detectors or alarms in the one million square-foot warehouse.
“It could have been contained, for sure,” Vinal said. “It could have been a small incident that they didn't remember a month later.”
Those findings now make it so every one of the over 3,000 neighbors impacted that day can now individually seek damages.
2 On Your Side reached out to the owner and tenant of the property for statements on the verdict but did not hear back.
The process on those individual lawsuits will begin as early as Wednesday, Vinal said.