Ararat Rural City Council requested that Roma 8 director Dominic Calabro provide advice regarding the presence of asbestos containing materials in the fire damaged remnants of two of the buildings in Queen Street, which were destroyed by fire in September this year.

AMCOSH Occupational Health and Safety Consultants were engaged to carry out an asbestos audit and risk assessment of the premises at the site in February 2008.

The identified asbestos containing materials consist of:

Asbestos cement sheeting (approximately 40 square metres of wall panels).

Tar insulation backing boards - Zelemite (approx five units).

Asbestos cement pipe sections (approximately 4 lnm).

Asbestos millboard around one electrical switchboard (approximately 0.5 square metres).

Asbestos containing materials may be divided into friable and non-friable types. According to the regulations, 'friable asbestos containing material' is defined as 'when dry, may be crumbled, pulverised or reduced to powder by hand pressure, or as a result of a work process becomes such that it may be crumbled, pulverised or reduced to powder by hand pressure'.

According to AMCOSH all the identified asbestos containing materials at the Prestige site, with the exception of the small quantity of millboard, are of a nonfriable nature.

"Based on the extent of asbestos containing materials identified in the 2008 audit and the photographs of the current state of the buildings, it is not considered that there is a risk of asbestos exposure from the fire affected buildings to occupants of the site or neighbouring areas," an AMCOSH spokesperson said in a letter to Mr Calabro.

"The asbestos containing materials are likely to be present within the building rubble structure and therefore not exposed as in the case of a fire affected asbestos cement sheet roof. No airborne asbestos fibres would be released into the environment provided the building rubble is not disturbed.

"It is not considered necessary to maintain the building rubble damp or take any other precautions to suppress any dust liberated from the building rubble from natural causes (eg wind).

"However, no disturbance of the building rubble should be undertaken until a visual assessment is conducted and the removal of the asbestos containing materials is organised prior to any works."

AMCOSH will be conducting a site inspection in the near future to further evaluate the asbestos hazard at the fire damaged buildings.