Mesothelioma at Warrick Power Plant in Newburgh, IN (Podcast)

In this podcast, John Maher and Paul Kelley discuss what happened in Warrick Power Plant in Newburgh, IN. This plant is known for having many employees, contractors, and others exposed to asbestos, which puts them at serious risk for developing mesothelioma and other related diseases.

John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky personal injury law firm, Satterley & Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today, we’re talking about mesothelioma at the Warrick Power Plant in Newburgh, Indiana. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How’s it going today?

John: I’m well, how are you, Paul?

Paul: Doing fantastic. Thank you.

What is Warrick Power Plant and Where are They Located?

John: Good. So Paul, tell us a little bit about the Warrick Power Plant and what they are, what they do, and where they’re located.

Paul: Sure. So the Warrick Power Plant Powerhouse, it’s located in Newburgh Indiana, and it’s actually for all intents and purposes, it’s next door to the Alcoa plant, which is aluminum producing plant. And actually, Warrick predominantly supported the Alcoa plant. But in addition, Warrick also provides power to other facilities and other customers in the Indiana, that Newburgh Indiana area.

The plant started operation in 1960 ultimately, and we’ll talk a little bit more about powerhouses, but basically a powerhouse has a turbine and a boiler. And the turbine creates the energy and the boiler creates the steam, which goes to the turbine to create the energy. So we’ll refer to it as a unit. So every unit has a turbine and a boiler. So there were four units at the Warrick Powerhouse, and all four units were built between 1960 and 1970. The last one being built in 1970 and went online in 1970.

And so, three of those units are actually owned by Alcoa. And the fourth unit is owned by a company called SIGECO. It’s Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company. And I believe that SIGECO operates all the units. So Alcoa owned three and SIGECO owns one and operates all four of them. And so powerhouses were infamous for having lots of asbestos. And turbines and boilers contain asbestos, and there were lots of different products. And we can talk about that in a minute. But basically from 1960 to 1970, this plant was built, and I believe that it’s still in full and complete operation today.

The Alcoa plant, I think it’s still in operation. Steam turbines and they’re coal operated plants are starting to be phased out. And so this one, if it hasn’t already been, it will be. But for 50 to 60 years, it provided power to both the Alcoa plant as well as to other customers in the Newburg, Indiana area.

Was Asbestos Used at Warrick Power Plant?

John: Yeah, so talk a little bit more about asbestos and where and why that was used in the Warrick Power Plant.

Paul: So asbestos is an excellent heat retention product. Power houses generate an incredible amount of heat. The boilers are thousands of degrees producing heat. The turbines have lots of heat. And so asbestos insulation in particular was a great heat retention product. And so the turbines were insulated with asbestos. They usually had a block insulation material that went over it, and then there would be muds that would use to fix it. There were some periods of time where they used the big asbestos blanket that they wrapped the outer shell of the turbine.

With all the piping containing asbestos, the valves that were connected to the piping were covered with asbestos. These boilers are many stories buildings. Imagine a seven or eight story building. That’s what these boilers are. And the boilers have fire brick and refractory material. Sometimes the outer shells of the turbines, or I’m sorry, parts of the boilers contain asbestos. All the piping that was connected to the boilers contained asbestos. So that’s just the turbine and the boiler. You have miles of pipes that goes throughout a power house.

Most of those pipes carry steam. All the steam lines were covered with asbestos insulation. Some of those pipes contain high temperature chemicals. Those would also be insulated with asbestos. Lots of the pipes were connected with asbestos containing gaskets. You had things like precipitators and smoke stacks and all kinds of different types of equipment that required high temperature that were all insulated with asbestos. You had valves and motors and pumps that were insulated with either packing or some other type of insulating material because of the high temperature associated with motors, for example.

Sometimes they had equipment there that contained breaks. These were industrial type breaks that contained asbestos. Even offices in some of these plants would’ve a ceiling tile and floor tile that contained asbestos. And so much thermal insulation, so many gaskets, so many valves and pumps that were all stuffed with asbestos packing. It was a wide variety of stuff.

Given the time period that this plant was constructed, all four units contained asbestos. All four turbines were originally insulated with asbestos. All four boilers were originally insulated with asbestos. And it was pervasive throughout the facility. And my educated guess is that if you went into that facility today, you’d still see a lot of asbestos that’s there. Hopefully it’s protected, but it’s still there.

What Types of Employees Were Exposed to Asbestos at Warrick Power Plant?

John: Right. So the asbestos was all over the place in this plant. Who were some of the employees or types of employees that might’ve been exposed to that asbestos?

Paul: The short answer is everybody, but the long answer is certainly they’re in the construction phase. It takes a lot of people to build a powerhouse, and they were fairly well building it continuously over that ten year period of time. And so certainly everybody that participated in building it, you’d get a wide variety of crafts that built it. We’ve represented electricians, insulators, and pipe fitters. If I didn’t say millwrights, those type of crafts.

So, the millwrights put in a lot of the equipment. Conveyors. You had coal that was used to heat the boilers and so they would build conveyors. They built scaffolding. They built all kinds of different types of conveyors. They’d set a lot of the equipment and they would be there during the insulation phase. Insulators, I mean, I told you before, all that plant had to be insulated. Some of the insulators were just there constantly insulating pipes and boilers and turbines and equipment. The pipe fitters who installed all those miles of pipes and they were present when all those pipes were insulated.

I mean, electricians have to connect all that equipment together. They have to work on the boilers, they have to work on the turbines. They have to work with asbestos insulated wire and cable. They had to set motors. They had to connect equipment to motors. Of course, the boilermakers. Boilermakers are the ones that built the boilers. They’re the ones that had to get inside the boilers and build the tubes. And sometimes they were present during the installation of the fire brick and refractory material.

The engineers that participated in designing and building, they had to oversee the project. They were there during the insulation phase. So certainly everybody that was there during construction. Well, when they put unit one up and they started building unit two, the people that are now operating unit one, they’re exposed both to the operation of the equipment in unit one that contain asbestos. And they’re also being exposed to what’s going on in unit two. I mean, these units weren’t super close together, but they were close enough.

So frequently we would hear that people would walk through unit two during the construction phase from time to time, and they were exposed even if they weren’t participating in that. Operating this equipment, a power plant is just a unique place. It’s loud, lots of vibrations in the plant, lots of insulation that deteriorates and falls down on people. Lots of maintenance activities where pipe fitters and other maintenance workers are tearing off insulation and exposing the people below them.

They would overhaul these turbines and boilers every so often, usually four or five, six years, depends on what the needs. And when they do that, they have to completely shut it down. They tear off all the insulation. They rip out all the fire brick in the boilers. They remove all the gaskets and then lots of times tear the packing out. These gaskets, once they are put on the pipes, I mean just absolutely affixed. The best I can describe it is if you stick a piece of gum on something and it sticks there for a long time, it just doesn’t come off in one piece. You’ve got to scrape it off.

And that’s what folks had to do with the gaskets. That’s what they had to do frequently with the packing and these valves. The pipe insulation, I mean it’d just crumble apart right in your breathing zone when it was occurring. We’ve had millwrights that participate in the overhauls. So it’s hard to explain without visual, but a turbine is usually a 50 to 75 foot vessel. And there are pipes above it and below it. And so, lots of times the millwrights would have to go below the turbine floor where there’s all these pipes that are all insulated, and they would actually stand on the pipes while they’re working on the turbine itself.

And all these pipes are insulated, and all the insulation is just pouring off the pipe because it’s deteriorated by this point. And just again, imagine just taking your finger and you could just crush it with your finger. It just comes apart. And then all that dust proliferates and you are in a very enclosed tight space. And so that’s just one example. But if you had somebody who’s highly specialized and educated person who’s running the plant, they’re exposed every day. The people that work in the office who answer the phones to procure products, they’re exposed on a frequent basis. People who deliver products are exposed on a frequent basis. Plant visitors.

I mean, I hear from people all the time who, well, we have a pretty good engineering school at the University of Louisville called the Speed School, and they had a co-op program. And so a lot of these kids, when they were going through their education, they would get sent to power houses. That was their co-op job, learning on the job. And they’re sent to a power house to participate in some aspect of either construction or operation, maintenance, over hall, whatever. And these twenty-year-old kids that don’t know anything are being exposed to asbestos.

So, it’s a very difficult environment and power houses aren’t clean. They are very dusty and dirty places. And because of the high temperature, they had to reinsulate a lot because that insulation would deteriorate within a year or two. And so they were just constantly removing and reinstalling. And yeah, there became a point in time where they replaced with non-asbestos stuff. But it sure did take a long time to get to that point. And we’re talking deep into the seventies, if not eighties before new asbestos came on or new non-asbestos came on. But certainly they didn’t just come through and take all the old off in one shot.

It’s still there today. They take it off as needed and people were frequently exposed. And there just really wasn’t much way to avoid it if you went into that plant and did anything from the time that it was built through probably the late eighties, early nineties.

What Should You Do if You Were Exposed to Asbestos at Warrick Power Plant?

John: So, if you were exposed to asbestos or potentially exposed because you worked at the Warrick Power Plant, what should you do next?

Paul: Well, I think it’s important to determine your legal rights. It’s obviously important to determine your legal rights. We have had a number of cases from that plant. There are entities that can be held accountable. Who those entities are going to depend on your personal situation. But I think it’s important to consult with a lawyer immediately and try to figure out whether you have a case and then determine whether the attorneys counsel you on how to pursue that case.

Of course, you’ve got a medical diagnosis that’s difficult. Mesothelioma is a very difficult disease. It’s almost always fatal, and it’s very important that you get your medical plan in place and determine what treatment you’re going to do. From a standpoint of what we do, we don’t necessarily have an opinion as to how you should pursue your medical care, except you should certainly find the best doctors in the country to help you do that and then determine the best plan for you and your family. While you’re doing that, ideally, we’re out there doing what we do.

And if you come to us and you worked at the Warrick Power Plant, we can probably get a case filed pretty quickly because we know the defendants and the parties that provided asbestos to that plant. But time is always of the essence. It’s of the essence because of your medical situation and the potential consequences of the diagnosis of mesothelioma. And it’s also of the essence because unfortunately, you don’t have a ton of time under the law to pursue your case. It’s also of the essence because your co-workers are older and people that worked in the plant who can provide product identification and tell us what was there or testify about what was there, they’re getting older and there’s fewer of them today.

So, we want to be able to identify all those people and get them deposed, get you deposed. So it’s unfortunate. I wish I could tell people that they had more time and they could figure it all out, but you don’t have a lot of time. You don’t have a lot of time to figure out your medical plan. And you don’t have a lot of time to figure out your legal plan. And so it’s important to identify lawyers that not only practice mesothelioma cases, but have had experience with a particular location that you worked at or locations that you worked at, because that could have a critical impact on how quickly a case can get filed.

And the quicker that the case gets filed, the quicker resolution comes to you and your family. It can take a long time to finalize the case from beginning to end. So if it takes six months to get a case on file, well, it’s probably going to take at least two years, two and a half years, to completely wrap the case up. It may not seem like the difference between two months and six months is a huge difference, but for somebody with a terminal cancer, it’s a huge difference.

What is the Statute of Limitations for Mesothelioma Cases?

John: And then another thing that you run into with mesothelioma cases is the statute of limitations. Can you talk a little bit about what the statute of limitations is in Indiana and how that relates or affects a mesothelioma claim like this?

Paul: Absolutely. In Indiana, you have two years basically from either the date of diagnosis or when or should know that you have a disease and what the cause of that disease is to file a claim. So it’s better than… I do a lot of cases in Kentucky and we only have one year. So two years better than one, but it certainly goes by fast. And as I’ve mentioned, you really don’t want to get anywhere close to that. You want to try to get that case filed as quickly as possible. You don’t want to run the risk that the judge disagrees with you and thinks you should have filed your case sooner. But more importantly, you just want to get that case filed so that you have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the case.

The statistics are not real good for prognosis for people with mesothelioma. It’s typically six months to 18 months from the time of diagnosis. There are certainly people, thank goodness, who live for years following diagnosis. But most people fit within that period of time. So getting the case filed and moving it along while you’re still able to participate, that’s our goal. We know that our clients, they want help for themselves and they want the peace of mind that what we’re doing is hopefully going to help their family. And they just want to be able to see that that’s happening before something terrible happens and they succumb to the disease.

John: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

Paul: Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

Get More Information About Asbestos Exposure Cases

John: And for more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, you can visit the law firm of Satterley and Kelly at Satterleylaw.com or call 855-385-9532.