(ConservativeJournal.org) – Military and civilian families are suing the government over the 2021 Hawaii fuel leak incident that led to the contamination of water facilities serving more than 93,000 people.
Over 2,500 plaintiffs are now dragging the US government into court and demanding them to pay $1.25 million to every one of them in damages.
The incident happened in November 2021 when the historic Red Hill underground oil storage facility malfunctioned and resulted in a 27,000 gallons of toxic jet fuel leak. By the end of November 2021, thousands of families were complaining of the contamination in their tap water. Red Hill was built in World War II and has been historically used to power US Navy equipment.
According to Kristina Baehr, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case, the government calls the fuel leak contamination, while the impacted families call it poisoning because they are the people who had to use the contaminated water despite the government’s knowledge of it.
Baehr, whose own family was the victim of the contamination, left her previous job at the US Justice Department to pursue legal battles for the thousands of families. She noted that her clients had developed symptoms of different diseases in recent times after the consumption of the poisonous water. Some infants born in the area right after the leak also suffered from medical conditions like skin rashes and others.
One plaintiff, Aurora Briggs, who was also impacted by the accident, stated that the list of medical conditions people had to endure in the aftermath of the leak is so long that they need to document it for legal purposes.
There is a general consensus among the plaintiffs that the better handling of the situation by the US Navy could have saved everyone from trouble. While the US military shut down the storage facility in 2022, residents claim that the fuel is stuck in the pipelines, which still contaminates drinking water.
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