Clean-Up After Carr Wildfire in Redding

Thousands of Shasta County residents were displaced by the Carr Fire and many who lost homes have been calling our office requesting asbestos sampling and to generally help with what the next steps will be.

Guzi-West has been in contact with our local health departments and we expect them to follow the cleanup standards utilized for the recent Sonoma Fires.  Homes that require demolition will likely be required to have a full asbestos survey of the remaining contents of the home so that the debris can be properly disposed of.

Further, environmental soil sampling will likely be required to ensure the soil beneath the home is not contaminated with various metals that may now be present from the interior contents of the home essentially melting.

To facilitate this, background soil samples will likely have to be collected around the perimeter of the structure; 3-6 inches of soil may need to be excavated to ensure the new home is built on non-contaminated soil; and, confirmation soil samples collected following the excavation to ensure the soil remains largely free of metals.  The number of confirmation samples and what constitutes ‘clean’ will be determined by our local health departments.

In the event the confirmation samples have concentrations of metals above the ‘clean’ criteria then the background soil samples will be analyzed to see if certain metals are naturally occurring in the vicinity of the home.  Although this sounds burdensome and slow, this work will likely happen rapidly once the protocols for sampling are in place.


To find out more about how we're helping families affected by this wildfire, please visit our website!