Environmental Protection Ministry officials inspected 22 factories within 40
km. of Gaza on Thursday, to ensure that all hazardous materials were in
safe, protected locations.
Throughout the day, teams of inspectors went
from factory to factory looking at the storage conditions of the materials —
such as those used in mass-production processes and cooling systems — and making
sure that there was no leakage, in case rockets were to hit the sites. Not only
was the team checking factories based on their distance to population centers,
but also based on who had a greater amount of materials that could cause a
potential hazard, a ministry official told The Jerusalem Post on
Thursday.
In two factories where the storage on site was not sufficiently
protected, the companies shipped their materials to other locations of their own
firms. At other sites that lacked proper storage facilities, the companies were
able to ship their materials to special facilities that the Environmental
Protection Ministry had dedicated in advance for the storage of dangerous
materials, the official said.
Every factory that had any issue was fixing
the situation immediately, and the problems were easily reparable within an
hour, according to the official. During the examinations, the ministry teams
also made sure that all of the factories had their proper toxins
permits.
Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan joined one of the
inspections, at the Tibon Veal factory in Kiryat Malachi.
“The ministry
staff deployed reinforcement teams, checking the factories in the South, and is
working in order to prevent risk to the population in the case of damage to one
of the plants containing hazardous materials,” Erdan said.
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