Dust cloud descends on buildings near Port of Vancouver
Posted September 23, 2012 6:01 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The mystery has been solved, but frustrations are still palpable in East Vancouver.
People living in a building along Wall Street, near the Port of Vancouver docks, say their apartment was blanketed by a cloud of dust Sunday afternoon.
“If you walk around our building, you’ll see something that looks like a volcano erupted. You’ll see foot prints through dust that look like bombs had exploded and there is ash everywhere, it’s that bad,” says Jess, one man who lives in the building.
“Imagine a ship on fire. That’s what the cloud looks like, except it’s not smoke coming off, it’s something else, and we’re breathing it in and it’s causing serious medical problems for people,” he insists, pointing to three cases of asthma in the building he says are linked to the cloud.
According to the Port of Vancouver, the dust is kicked up when grain gets loaded onto a ship.
The port’s Barb Joy-Kinsella says when the cloud gets this bad they are able to mitigate it somewhat.
“In this circumstance it includes spraying the area with water to minimize the dust cloud. That was done, and at three o’clock, the work was completed.”
Jess says this is an ongoing situation for people living in the area. He believes it has been particularly bad this past week, but says the dust clouds are there pretty well everyday, and he contends the Port of Vancouver has not been taking their complaints seriously enough.
