Burning up the night: Firebugs target vacant Bridgeton homes
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| David Kennedy photo - An interior view of one of the homes left standing in the portion of Bridgeton that was acquired through the buyout by Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Arsonists have been targeting the vacant homes since the buyout began. |
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"You can call it 'arson,'" said Fire Marshall Charlie Braband of the Robertson Fire Protection District.
He was referring to structure fires, seven on one recent weekend alone, that his agency has responded to in the now-vacant portion of Bridgeton purchased by Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The airport bought the properties as part of the noise mitigation program and to build a new runway.The city of St. Louis-owned property still has more than two dozen structures scattered throughout what was the Carrollton subdivision.
Braband said those amount to little more than targets for firebugs.
"It's a serious situation," he said, "because it's a fire and because we have to go into those to put them out."
The Airport Commission is responsible for the abandoned buildings.
Jeff Lea, Lambert's director of public relations, said there is a plan in place to have all 26 remaining structures taken down by the end of the year.
"That's in the works," Lea said, noting that airport officials are working on a contract for the demolition of the buildings.
The burned-out remains of the houses give the area an eerie quality, not unlike the atmosphere associated with another area of St. Louis County that was bought out and razed - Times Beach, the dioxin-laced Meramec River community that was purchased by the federal government.
The Robertson Fire Protection District has been responding to blazes in the area ever since the early stages of the acquisition by the airport.
"We've had problems from right when the buyout started," Braband said. "The frequency of those fires has increased."
The weekend of July 18 and 19 proved especially troublesome for the fire agency, when arsonists torched seven of the structures.
So far, the fires appear to be the work of juveniles.
Bridgeton Police Maj. Don Hood said four juveniles were taken into custody for some of the earlier fires.
Braband said he was unaware that a time frame had been set to bring down the remaining structures.
"I haven't talked to anyone who has officially told me the end of the year," he said.
Braband suggested that maybe one reason the demolition process has taken so long is that several of the remaining structures have a level of asbestos that precludes simply knocking them down and hauling away the debris. To meet environmental-agency requirements, those structures must be carefully taken apart and the debris carted to a landfill designed to handle hazardous materials, he said.
