"Sitting at the kitchen table with his wife, Carole, Mervin Klees recalled showing up to work at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe train shops outside West Burlington. He and his coworkers would file into the massive locomotive repair building early in the morning, where the maintenance crew sometimes had re-fitted the pipes in the ceiling the night before. To get to the pipes, workers would have to cut through the asbestos insulation."
"Klees remembers how particles of the stuff would float in the air, covering the floor and equipment in the shop with a soft white carpet.
'Like snow. You'd have to brush it off, like this,' Klees said, waving his hand in front of his face. "
Michael Anderson reports for the Burlington Hawkeye May 13, 2012.
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