RICHMOND, IN — It has been more than two years since a fire at the former My Way Trading Warehouse site ravaged Richmond.
Yet several people who still live in the neighborhood directly behind 308 NW F St. recall the incident as if it were yesterday.
Jeanna Kelley and Jason Whichard, who have lived in a home directly behind the site for 18 and six years, respectively, say they are still experiencing the effects of the fire.
“We still get soot on everything,” Whichard said. “You can’t touch it. Anytime you touch anything out here, you’ll just be covered in the soot, big chunks of black stuff all in the yard.”
Whichard said he was told by city officials that “the black stuff” is safe, though Kelley, his wife, and dog have been having skin problems as a result of coming into contact with it.
“We had to leave, and our air conditioner was on, so it flowed through the house,” he said. They only had a few minutes to leave and didn’t have time to turn the air conditioning off.
Whichard said he thinks the situation has been handled poorly, both by Cornerstone Trading and city officials.
“I heard that the guy was ordered to clean up several times and he didn’t,” he said OF WHO. “He wasn’t fined or anything. And I guess the city owned part of that back there. I don’t know.”
According to property records, Cornerstone Trading still owns the site of the fire at 308 NW F St., and the city owns the land directly next to it at 310 NW F St.
Injuries seen on Jeanna Kelley’s leg, which she believes to have been from walking barefoot in her yard and coming in contact with soot in the aftermath of the My Way Trading Warehouse fire.
Kelley said she saw a doctor for her legs, and the doctor told her the injuries might be from diabetes. But she said she knows it’s not.
“I’m still cleaning up soot from my legs,” she said. “They started discoloring. I noticed that my hands would go numb and they still go numb. They said it was neuropathy, but it’s not your typical signs of neuropathy. It’s a different kind of numb. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Kelley said she returned to her home two days after the fire because she had dogs still there that she couldn’t take with her.
Jeanna Kelley and Sara Behey, who live behind the site of the My Way Trading Warehouse fire, are two of the many people who were displaced by the fire on April 11, 2023.
“I worked at Help the Animals for nine years before I started (dog) grooming,” she said. “Jim (her dog) has bad skin problems and I think it has to do with” the fire.
Kelley said that despite not being a dirty person, she’s noticed rings of soot around her neck.
A tree on Kelley’s property also fell as a result of the fire, she said, saying that the city or its insurance should have covered it. She said she has “battled” with her own insurance company, which is now handling it.
Kelley’s friend, Sara Behey, said she was displaced to her friend’s son’s house in Muncie for a week.
“I went outside to take the dog out, and there was this pillar, black smoke everywhere,” she said. “You could smell the plastic and stuff. It was awful. I went inside and got my friend Stacy, and then we turned the radio on and started listening to what was going on.
“There was soot and stuff at her house as well,” Behey said. “Found big pieces of plastic. I found some in this yard since I’ve (lived) here. They even found it over in New Paris.”
Jesse Johnson is one of several who have joined a federal class action lawsuit against Cornerstone Trading Group and the city of Richmond. He said he was displaced from the fire for two weeks and his family had to buy bottled water and items for their animals after concerns about chemical contamination.
“My father-in-law, he’s got a sister that lives a couple blocks down and she got wind of the lawsuit,” Johnson said. “She told us that we should call and get in on it, so we called the lawyer’s office and they proceeded with everything from there.”
Jesse Johnson, who lives behind the site of the My Way Trading Warehouse fire, has joined the class action lawsuit filed by affected residents against Cornerstone Trading Group and the city of Richmond.
Johnson agreed with others that the site that caught on fire should have been cleaned up “a long time ago.”
“I’m sure that people have told you that place was an eyesore,” he said. “The city actually got onto them a few times about it. The only thing they did was put some big black totes, kind of like skids but with sides, and they just stacked them up.”
Kirstyn Hahn, another resident displaced for two weeks, said she was driving home from work in Indianapolis after the fire had broken out. It took her close to 45 minutes to drive from Northwest Fifth Street to Northwest Eighth Street because of people blocking the road with their cars, stopped to watch the fire.
Kirstyn Hahn, who lives behind the site of the My Way Trading Warehouse fire on April 11, 2023, said she was displaced for two weeks, along with her boyfriend, then-6-month-old daughter, four cats and dog.
“By the time I got here, an officer pulled up,” she said. “As soon as I got out of my car, they were like, ‘You guys have literally five minutes. You need to evacuate.'”
All Hahn and her then-boyfriend, who was watering the yard by the time she got home, had time to grab were her four cats, dog and 6-month-old daughter.
“We just had to immediately get out, because you could feel the heat,” she said. “I thought for sure it was going to end up spreading.”
What Hahn and her boyfriend didn’t have time for to was to close the upstairs window.
“We came to check on it the next day after and it was completely hazy, like super dark,” Hahn said. “You couldn’t see anything. We went inside just to kind of see if it was like that inside and just to try and grab some belongings really fast.”
In the aftermath, Hahn said that they brought in a smoke professional, who told her the damages were very minor and all they had to do was to wipe it down.
But what took longer for the cleanup process at Hahn’s home was the debris that found its way into her yard.
“That honestly took them forever to pick up even though they were directing us not to touch it,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, we have a dog that has to go out in the yard and a kid.’ I ended up flagging someone down when I saw him because they came here apparently, but they didn’t get all of the debris.”
Hahn also incurred financial loss, having to skip work for a day or two because of not having any clothes, and ended up replacing all the food in her home out of fear of chemicals spreading to them because of the fire.
“Not a huge loss,” she said. “But still, just all of it together, this could have been avoided.”
As far as the city’s handling of the cleanup, Hahn is not happy.
“This neighborhood is already not the greatest,” she said. “And then you go ahead and have that huge eyesore that was already there, and then it burns down. I heard they got a lot of money to clean it up. Where did it go? Because it’s still trashed over there. It looks like crap.
“It’s actually really frustrating,” Hahn said. “They could definitely handle that better. I think even just a public apology in general. A lot of us were misplaced.”
Hahn added that the city did make a kind gesture to the residents of the neighborhood, providing cleaning kits with a bucket, gloves, a scrubber, off-brand dish soap, a mask and a couple other items, but nothing she said would help clean up chemicals.
Richmond mayor Ron Oler said the city finished its cleanup of the property it owns next to Cornerstone’s finished last year, and that the piles of debris at the site are Cornerstone Trading Group’s responsibility.
Seth Smith, owner of the Cornerstone Trading Group, did not respond to voicemail messages from the Palladium-Item seeking comment on the cleanup’s status.
Related: Richmond fire completely extinguished; residents still need to take precautions
Related: Focus turns to getting displaced Richmond residents home as firefighters control blaze
Related: ‘Better times ahead’: The Richmond fire through Mayor Dave Snow’s eyes
Related: Who’s at fault for Richmond fire? Code violations date back years
Court allows class-action certification in lawsuit
On Sept. 29, the U.S. Southern District Court of Indiana found that the lawsuit met the requirements necessary to certify the class.
The judge designated John A. Smalley from Dyer Garofalo Mann & Schultz as lead class counsel.
Hahn and Kelley both said they weren’t sure how to join the class, but said they would look into it.
Related: One month later: City of Richmond outlines cleanup plan following large industrial fire
Related: City of Richmond to retake control of My Way Trading Warehouse site after EPA concludes cleanup
Related: One year later: City of Richmond gives statement on My Way Trading Warehouse fire
Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Residents recall My Way Trading fire two years later, class action lawsuit advances
