4 September 7 - 13, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The daughter of a heroic Dallas fireman wants answers after her father’s death and its possible link to ‘forever chemicals.’ BY CHRISTIAN MCPHATE T he fire started late one night in December 1974. Christmas was around the corner. Three-year-old Antonio Garcia, his 6-year-old brother Rudy and their 5-year-old sister Yolanda were asleep. Their parents, Rudy and Maria, had left them in the care of their grandmother while they went to get medicine from the pharmacy for Yolanda, who wasn’t feeling well. None of them realized the house was on fire until it was well on its way to becoming an inferno. When she noticed the fire, Antonio’s grandmother rushed out of the house to a small converted garage where extended family were living. A nephew was able to rescue Antonio from the blaze. But then the fire escalated, pre- venting him from reaching Rudy and Yolanda, who was born with cerebral palsy and unable to walk. By the time Dallas Fire Capt. Harold Minter and Dallas Fire-Rescue Officer Jimi Hendrix arrived on the scene, the parents had returned from the pharmacy. Maria told Minter and Hendrix that her two youngest children were trapped inside. She pointed to their bedrooms. Minter and Hendrix had been working at Dallas Fire- Rescue since the late 1950s and 1960s, respectively. They had joined the department for similar reasons, for “some- thing much more fulfilling to him,” Hendrix’s family wrote in his June 8, 2022, obituary. They were dressed in their pro- tective suits and oxygen masks, ready to fight the inferno. What they didn’t realize is that their protective suits may have been slowly poisoning them. S everal lawsuits have been filed by firefighters, an interna- tional firefighter association and two state attorneys gen- eral against the chemical companies that make protective gear and firefighting foam. The products contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS. The synthetic chemicals are widely used in products for their resistance to heat, water and oil and for their non- sticking properties. Studies suggest that some types of PFAS might be linked to cancer. Since 2005, more than 6,400 PFAS-related lawsuits have been filed, Bloomberg Law reported in May 2022. DuPont, Dynax Corp., 3M, Kiddle-Fenwell and National Foam Inc., are named in various suits. The list of chemical companies being sued continues to grow. In February 2022, more than a dozen Massachusetts fire- fighters who serve in Boston, Brockton, Fall River, Worces- ter and Norwood filed a lawsuit against DuPont, 3M, AGC Chemicals Americas Inc., Buckeye Fire Equipment and 19 other companies for using the so-called “forever chemicals” in their firefighter gear and foam “when those companies have long known of the dangers of that class of chemicals,” according to a Feb. 2022 Boston Globe report. As the Globe reported, the 15 firefighters didn’t know of the presence of PFAS in their gear until blood tests revealed high levels of PFAS in their systems in December 2021, the same month that DuPont planned to phase out buying fire- fighting foam made with PFAS chemicals. The Florida Attorney General’s Office sued DuPont and 13 companies in May 2022 for failing to include a product warning on the firefighting foam that includes PFOA, Mike Brooks Harold Minter receives the Medal of Valor in 1975. | UNFAIR PARK | Firefighters’ American flags and a Dallas fire engine honor Fire Capt. Harold Minter at his funeral in August . >> p6 Fire Museum of Texas Curse
