ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — Three lawsuits were filed this week against the City of Albuquerque and the mishandling of asbestos at the Gibson Health Hub, also known as the Gateway Center. The asbestos problem was first exposed in a Larry Barker investigation.

Two of the lawsuits have nearly two dozen plaintiffs who say they were exposed to asbestos while working the building. The third is from three city workers who say they were retaliated against because they cooperated with investigations into the asbestos.

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A 26-page lawsuit says the city knew the asbestos risks and ignored them, putting the people inside the Gibson Health Hub at risk.

“What we do know is that any human being that has been alive since the 1970s knows that asbestos is bad. It is appalling, and to quote The Princess Bride, ‘inconceivable,’ that people could do this in the 21st century,” said Richard Cravens IV, attorney for the plaintiffs in that lawsuit. It focuses on the Gateway’s Women Shelter area on the second floor of the Gibson Health Hub, which was the focus of a Larry Barker investigation in April of last year.

“Just looking at the materials and everything that they were working with, any human being with any knowledge in the construction industry would have questioned whether or not it would be safe to work on this until you found out whether it did contain asbestos; they did not do that,” Cravens said.

The lawsuit states the city intentionally and negligently exposed people to asbestos. Cravens says the city didn’t test the area, ignored orders from state agencies to stop work until the area had been tested, made employees keep working in dangerous conditions without the right protective gear, and improperly disposed of the materials containing asbestos.

“When they were told there was a good chance there was asbestos they still made the workers work in this. They knew this for a very long time. And like I said, they didn’t actually inform everybody as per law—Larry Barker did,” Cravens said.

He believes while this work was underway, hundreds if not thousands of people could have been exposed: “Everybody who walked through that place was exposed to some degree. There are state senators, our governor, our mayor. Every human being who walked through there, every trip that any group went to go see this. Anybody who walked through that place during this time was exposed to asbestos,” Cravens said.

Cravens expects more plaintiffs to come forward: “How do you make sure that this doesn’t happen again, and how do you compensate the people that were hurt from this? That’s what we’re working on.”

The three city workers are claiming whistle-blower status; they say they were intimidated, harassed, and threatened in retaliation for cooperating with the investigation in the Gibson Health Hub.

The mayor’s office responded with a statement:

“The City has not been served with this complaint yet, but we have acknowledged several times that asbestos concerns were identified early in the process and that while not all protocols were correctly followed, abatement was carried out to remove all asbestos containing materials. The Gateway Center is now open and serving members of our community to get them on a path toward stable housing, and we are focused on continuing to build out the next phases of the facility so that we can continue to provide hope and healing to even more people.”

Ava Montoya, spokesperson for the City of Albuquerque Mayor’s Office

The state deemed the City of Albuquerque ‘willfully’ violated federal safety regulations and the city was fined more than $760,000. The city is still in negotiations with OSHA to determine how much the city will pay the state for that fine.