In a recent legal move, Verlan Fire Insurance Co., part of the Hanover Insurance Group, has turned the spotlight on BioLab and its parent companies KIK International and KIK Custom Products, over the 2024 Conyers chemical blaze which sent waves of toxic smoke across Rockdale County and buckled the chest of metro Atlanta with a heavy, chlorine odor, as per FOX 5 Atlanta. Demanding reimbursement, the insurance firm claims it has shelled out over $20 million in payments to Diversitech, an HVAC supplier neighboring the burned BioLab premises and they want BioLab to foot the bill for the "negligence, carelessness and recklessness" that led to the fire and the harmful smoke that followed, as per 11Alive.
According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, BioLab's facility brushed off the critical need for a top-tier fire suppression system and neglected to uphold a comprehensive emergency action plan, the lack of which dealt a hard blow to local businesses and residential safe havens, details pulled from a report by 11Alive show.
An EPA inspection from June 2023 noted dearth, the emergency contingency plan was not in effect marked "N/A", and it was only in the aftermath that the fire departments' siren call that revised plans got the green light, this according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The potent repercussions have rained down on BioLab, with OSHA hammering it with fines for serious violations pertaining to hazardous material storage, and local governments and aggrieved parties forming a quilt of lawsuits all grappling with the shadow of this disaster.
The insurance provider's court claim rounds out a year of penetrating scrutiny on BioLab, given the federal Chemical Safety Board's update that BioLab housed double its planned limit of reactive materials and wrestled with a faltering sprinkler system as the particle-laden smoke first unfurled itself across the September sky; the CSB findings reiterated the situational chaos that unfurled, as employees confronted the flames on that early morning day on Sept. 29, 2024, 11Alive reported.
