Asbestos

At the end of the street the only house with any real character in the neighborhood is meeting its doom after about 130 years of existence.

It had been re-clad in asbestos cement at some stage in its life, so this had to be removed.

Get this, the guys that removed it put up a fence so no one could see it and then waited for a rainy day so that dust would be less likely to drift, and basically they tore and hammered the asbestos sheet right off the frame.

This process is a little agricultural me-thinks. I could imagine an air-tight tent, like they use in the US for termite chemical spraying. Or a large sprinkler system with a proper drainage system. As it is, the dust they make simple gets to dry out after the rain and annoy the neighbors later.

I don’t think our regulations are tough enough and this is partially because the claims for Asbestosis are being settled by James Hardie and CSR, so the government has a lower than usual incentive to fix this.