More on Rabbi Moshe Rubashkin's abandonded mill from the Allentown Morning Call:
With the last of a mysterious flammable substance contained, demolition of the burned-out Montex Mills building in south Allentown will resume.
Mayor Roy C. Afflerbach announced Monday that the state Department of Environmental Protection has sent a sample of the substance to its lab in Harrisburg to be identified.
''We have not been advised of a timetable [for the analysis],'' Afflerbach said in a prepared statement. ''Demolition will be resumed on that portion of the site from which the material has been safely removed.''
Afflerbach said the substance had been placed in sealed containers and secured on the Montex Mills site away from the area of the building undergoing demolition.
Vacant since 1999, the Montex building was the site of a massive blaze in April that gutted a portion of the building and took firefighters two days to extinguish. Bolts of fabric, large spools of thread and machinery fed the fire, which was ruled an arson and is still under investigation.
The building caught fire again on July 25 as demolition workers hired by the city were at work tearing down the structure, resulting in the evacuation of 18 families who lived nearby. The site flared up again two days later in a pile of demolition debris, putting a halt to demolition for a second time.
Analysis of the flammable substance ordered by the Allentown Fire Department showed it contained metal shavings and powder that included highly combustible magnesium and phosphorus.
It is not known whether the substance may have been used to burn down the building or was simply used in the textile manufacturing processes that took place at Montex.
City Council voted in June to appropriate $400,000 to demolish the building, which had been determined a public safety hazard.
Background here.