Last October, wildfires ravaged Northern California covering a 245,000-acre path of destruction over a 24-day period. When the last fire was finally extinguished, nearly 9,000 homes and buildings were destroyed with total damages exceeding $12-billion as a result of the wildfires. Quickly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers went to work to begin a cleanup program that continued through March 2018.  

As part of the USACE cleanup program, Merit Laboratories performed analytical laboratory testing on more than 4,000 soil samples over multiple sample collection events that lasted several months.  All soil samples analyzed by Merit Laboratories were completed following an expedited 24-hour turnaround time (TAT) for heavy metals.