It’s been almost 25 years since federal authorities, responding to news reports of deaths and illnesses, descended on the small northwestern Montana town of Libby to clean it up
Paul Resch remembers playing baseball as a kid on a field constructed from asbestos-tainted vermiculite, mere yards from railroad tracks where trains kicked up clouds of dust as they hauled the contaminated material from a mountaintop mine through the northwestern Montana town of Libby. He liked to sneak into vermiculite-filled storage bins at an adjacent rail yard, to trap pigeons that he would feed, during long days spent by the tracks along the Kootenai River.
Today, Resch, 61, is battling an asbestos-related disease that has severely scarred his left lung. He’s easily winded, quickly tires and knows there is no cure for an illness that could suffocate him over time.
“At some point, probably everybody got exposed to it,” he said, speaking of asbestos-tainted vermiculite. “There was piles of it along the railroad tracks. … You would get clouds of dust blowing around downtown.”
Almost 25 years after federal authorities responding to news reports of deaths and illnesses descended on Libby, a town of about 3,000 people near the U.S.-Canada border, some asbestos victims and their family members are seeking to hold publicly accountable one of the major corporate players in the tragedy: BNSF Railway.
Hundreds of people died and more than 3,000 have been sickened from asbestos exposure in the Libby area, according to researchers and health officials. Texas-based BNSF faces accusations of negligence and wrongful death for failing to control clouds of contaminated dust that used to swirl from the rail yard and settle across Libby’s neighborhoods.
The vermiculite was shipped by rail from Libby for use as insulation in homes and businesses across the U.S.
The first trial among what attorneys say are hundreds of lawsuits against BNSF for its alleged role polluting the Libby community is scheduled to begin Monday.
Attorneys for the railroad — owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. — deny responsibility.
Resch works at an auto dealership in Libby and his wife is listed as a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit against BNSF in Montana’s asbestos claims court. He’s uncertain whether his sickness came from the rail yard.
