Crippen Charges Civil Rights Violated

Now that fighting the fire is over with, the court fight is heating up in California in the aftermath of the huge fire cause by a large pile of debris at the Crippen Demolition site in Fresno, CA, according to the Fresno Bee.

The fire, which burned for almost a month, filled the local area with smoke so thick and toxic that children had to stay inside, was caused by a three-story tall, almost five-acre pile of speculatively collected demolition debris. It costs the state $6.4 million to put it out and clean it up.

Crippen, who earlier has said the fire was not his fault but the city’s for letting him build up the pile, has now filed a lawsuit against officials of the city of Fresno saying they ran afoul of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment when they revoked his operating permits, billed him for more than $600,000 in firefighting costs, and took other actions against him in the fire’s aftermath.

According to the Bee, the lawsuit contends that the city singled out Crippen for harsh treatment with no basis for doing so, except “ill will” and “an otherwise illegitimate, vindictive or spiteful desire to ‘get’ him.”

The lawsuit came a day after a state auditor looking into why the fire happened blamed shoddy communication and lax oversight as the reason the fire grew so large. According to the auditor, because the new, tougher permitting regulations were not yet in place on C&D recycling centers before the fire started, not enough inspections of the site were going on to prevent the fire. No mention was made in the report that a facility near Sacramento that had had the more strict permit for years also had its large pile of C&D catch on fire in 2003.

In response to the audit and the fire, a local state legislator has introduced a bill in the California legislature that will require C&D facilities that are cited by the IWMB to stop operating, even if the citation is under appeal.