Hazmat Crew Rushes To Scrap Yard

After a burglar passed off a load of stolen pipes from a toxic power plant, scrap metal worker Jose Canuelas found himself stripping down Monday afternoon and heading home in a Tyvek suit.

Canuelas (pictured) works at the Alderman & Dow scrap metal yard on Chapel Street off the Mill River. The yard sits just a block away from English Station, the abandoned power plant perched on an island in the Mill River.

Cops got a phone call at 10:35 a.m. Monday that two men had broken into the power plant.

“Somebody saw them go in and go out,” recalled Sgt. Tony Zona, Fair Haven’s top cop. The caller caught the license plate of the gold Chrysler Concorde getaway car.

When police got the call, they knew right where to check — the scrap metal yard just down the river at 358 Chapel.

“We saw them coming out of Alderman-Dow,” recalled Zona. He advised cops not to touch the suspects. English Station is contaminated with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), highly toxic compounds that can cause cancer.

The suspects surrendered, Zona said. Firefighters from Hazmat 1 and Squad 1 showed up and helped them strip down and change into Tyvek suits. One of the trespassers was the same man who was caught just two months ago breaking into English Station. That time, the suspect was hosed and scrubbed down in the street. This time, the weather was too cold, so the suspects would be ​“decontaminated” at the hospital, Zona said. After that, they would be arrested on trespassing and burglary charges.

Zona said the two perpetrators were men in their 20s or 30s.

They sold 50 to 100 pounds of copper and brass to the scrap metal yard worth $200 to $250, according to yard boss Ian Alderman. Alderman said his family scrap metal yard followed all rules required by law, including asking for the seller’s identification and taking photos of the material. The yard submits weekly reports listing all the goods it buys and from whom it buys them. Alderman said the yard had no way of knowing whether the material was contaminated.

When police showed up, they announced the health hazard. Two Alderman-Dow workers who handled the stolen goods, Canuelas and another man, were told to strip down and get into Tyvek suits.

Canuelas wasn’t happy with the situation the burglars put him in.

“Everyday I come home, I go home to three kids,” he said. He wants to be sure he isn’t passing on toxins to his little ones.

Shortly after 1 p.m., Canuelas stood shivering on the sidewalk in the Tyvek suit. He lost everything he was wearing: a pair of jeans, underwear, socks, even his boots.

“I’m naked under here,” Canuelas, who lives in Fair Haven Heights. ​“Just wait till I tell my wife. She’s going to go crazy.”

The clothes were placed into a red plastic bag and sealed up.

The suspects’ car sat on the sidewalk. Visible in the back seat was a sign that read ​“Poison.”

The toxic materials, including the stolen metal, were being held until the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection could arrive and dispose of them.