Odin and a joint venture partner were awarded a $68 million contract to provide Emergency Structural Debris and Hazard Tree Removal Services to the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) from five fire- impacted counties (Lassen, Plumas, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity) following multiple, “non-complex” fires in July through October 2021. The so-called Dixie Fire
was the largest of the fires and burned 963,309 acres in total. The Dixie fire was named for the creek where it started and the first fire to have burned across the
crest of the Sierra Nevada. Following emergency proclamations and Executive Orders in 2021, California’s Consolidated Debris Removal Program was implemented to clean up destroyed structures and hazardous trees that resulted from the fires. The operation was funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Public Assistance private property debris removal (PPDR) requirements. Additional State of California special funding covered operational costs not funded by FEMA. In compliance with FEMA Public Assistance requirements, the State of California’s third-party environmental consultant in conjunction with the Incident Management Team (IMT) was responsible for leading individual property assessments; overseeing compliance with regulatory requirements; setting background and cleanup levels; and collecting samples for analysis to ensure that soil cleanup levels were achieved by debris removal efforts. The Odin team worked closely and cooperated with the environmental consultant as well as with utility companies, state government agencies, and other contractors to minimize impacts and delays.

Prior to field mobilization, Odin prepared a site-specific Health and Safety Plan (HASP) for the work in compliance with OSHA standard 29 CFR Part 1910.120, Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER). The HASP specified worker protection, including personal protective equipment (PPE), air monitoring, and other worker safety measures. All workers were trained and briefed on the HASP and the hazards and procedures for onsite work. Given that ash has the potential to contain elevated levels of heavy metals and asbestos, Odin crews set up exclusion zones around debris removal sites and wore “Level C” PPE. Air monitoring was conducted continuously by Odin to monitor worker safety; asbestos, silica, and metals (antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, silver, thallium, vanadium, and zinc) were monitored. Aggressive dust control measures required that fire-related debris be always wet and hauled to the landfill wrapped in plastic to ensure that no hazardous materials were released. Further, Odin’s crews cleaned tires and equipment on site so that no dirt or mud was tracked onto the public right of way.