The fire started late one night in December 1974.
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 “something much more fulfilling to him,” Hendrix’s family wrote in his June 8, 2022, obituary. They were dressed in their protective suits and oxygen masks, ready to fight the inferno.
“To implicate DuPont de Nemours in these past issues ignores this corporate evolution, and the movement of product lines and personnel that now exist with entirely different companies,” Turner wrote in an Aug. 23 email. “DuPont de Nemours has never manufactured PFOA, PFOS or firefighting foam. While we don’t comment on litigation matters, we believe these complaints are without merit, and we look forward to vigorously defending our record of safety, health and environmental stewardship.
Maria Garcia, with her sons Antonio and Rudy. Harold Minter and a partner rescued two of the Garcia children from a fire in 1974.PFAS chemicals, also known as “forever chemicals,” linger in the body for decades and have been linked to a dozen different types of cancers that affect the bladder, breast, colon, kidney, liver, pancreas, prostate, rectum, testicles and thyroid. They can also lead to leukemia and lymphoma.
According to the group of three litigation firms that make up PFAS Law Firms, representing IAFF in the lawsuit, nearly 75% of deaths among firefighters involved occupational cancer. “We have to fight whenever we have an inactive person who is diagnosed with cancer,” said Dallas Fire Fighter Association’s McDade. “We have to get the city to declare it as an on-duty injury, and every time we have to fight.Suzanne Minter would visit her father at Fire Station 3 when she was a child in the 1970s.
Kovar said that he spent the day with Minter and other firefighters, who let him try out some of the equipment and ride in one of the fire trucks to Fair Park, where he raised the ladders and pumped water.“The whole station is a camaraderie, a brotherhood,” Kovar said. “But going to visit the station is completely different. You get to see how they live and function during the day. … It wasn’t show-and-tell, like when they bring the fire trucks to the schools.