Residents fear asbestos blown into their street by the storm will become airborne. Photo: supplied
Fairfield residents fear dried-out asbestos, which became dislodged during Thursday’s powerful storm, has dried out and become airborne.
And they say Brisbane City Council had not acted on calls before the potentially deadly substance began breaking up on Saturday.
The southside suburb was one of the worst affected in Thursday afternoon’s powerful storm, which Premier Campbell Newman described as the biggest to hit Brisbane in almost 30 years.
The damage bill was expected to top $100 million.
Brougham Street, Fairfield, resident Gavin Jacobi said the material, which he and his neighbours believed to be asbestos, had blown off the roof of an auto-repair garage across the road.
Mr Jacobi said he understood there had been a lot of damage across Brisbane, which was taking up a lot of the emergency response time, but asbestos should be treated as a priority.
“A whole crap-load of the stuff blew on to the road,” he said.
“Everyone rang council and said ‘Look, there’s asbestos on the road – it’s wet at the moment but when it dries out, things are going to start to get nasty’.
“The council said they’d get on to it within an hour, and that was yesterday. Now we’ve got powdered asbestos blowing through the area here.”
Mr Jacobi said asbestos posed a serious health threat and needed to be dealt with.
“With asbestos, if we breathe the stuff in, who knows what will happen 30 years down the road?” he said.
“There’s so much traffic here, you can actually hear the crunching of it breaking up.”
Comment has been sought from Brisbane City Council.