Plant I used to work in explodes! 20 workers injured.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

CLAIRTON, Pa. – An oven at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh exploded Wednesday, injuring 20 workers, at least six critically, causing a fire that burned for hours, emergency officials said.

The powerful blast in the coke oven at United States Steel Corp.'s Clairton Coke Works happened around 9:30 a.m., Allegheny County spokesman Kevin Evanto said. Most of the workers suffered burns; one suffered chest pains.

"It's a miracle that anybody even walked away from that," Allegheny County Emergency Services Chief Bob Full told reporters at the scene. He said the explosion was so mighty it bent steel beams and destroyed block walls.

Everyone had been accounted for, and the cause of the explosion was being investigated, union and company officials said. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had a team of investigators on site, spokeswoman Leni Fortson said.

"It was a big boom and then everything just went black," janitor John Chappell, 59, of Clairton, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review as he left UPMC Mercy. He was not injured.

"It was pitch black but you could tell there was debris flying all over the place," Chappell told the newspaper. "I'm just blessed because I know it could have been worse."

An air quality inspector at the plant at the time of the blast said he saw a large cloud of smoke that dissipated quickly, said Jim Thompson, manager of the Allegheny County Air Quality Program. Thompson said that and other factors indicate the explosion may have been caused by the gas used to heat one of the coke ovens.

Neighbors said they heard alarms at the plant but didn't know at first whether it was a real emergency.

"They always play their siren," said Tiarra Williams, 17, who lives on a hill overlooking the plant. A maintenance worker died in a September 2009 explosion at the plant, which sits in a valley along the Monongahela River about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh.

About 1,500 people work at the plant, said Michael Wright, head of the health, safety and environment department for the United Steelworkers union. The company said 14 employees and six contractors were injured.

Coke, a raw material used in steelmaking, is coal that is baked for a long time at a high temperature to remove impurities. The coal is baked in special ovens, several of which make up a coal battery; there are 12 batteries at the Clairton plant.

The explosion happened during maintenance in the B battery, which consists of 75 ovens. The battery is located on the northern side of the sprawling plant and was shut down after the explosion, but a U.S. Steel spokeswoman said the rest of the plant was operating normally.

U.S. Steel calls its Clairton plant the biggest coke manufacturing facility in the U.S., producing about 4.7 million tons per year.

At Pittsburgh's West Penn Hospital, two workers in their 50s were in critical condition with chemical burns in their airways as well as burns to their heads, necks and faces, said Dr. Larry Jones, the hospital's director of emergency medicine.

"The burns themselves are serious burns, but with the inhalation injury on top of it, these are very, very serious, a very serious situation," Jones said.

A third worker, in his 40s, was in serious condition with burns on his head, neck, face and hands, and an ankle fracture, Jones said.

Six workers, men ranging in age from 20 to 50, were taken to UPMC Mercy, said Dr. Alain Corcos, medical director of UPMC Mercy's trauma and burn centers. UPMC spokeswoman Kristin Beaver said Wednesday night that four patients were in the burn unit in critical condition and another patient was listed as serious. The sixth was released.

One injured worker was taken to UPMC McKeesport, and three were taken to UPMC Presbyterian, Corcos said. Their condition was not known.

One person was admitted to Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Jefferson Hills with chest pains, spokeswoman Candy Williams said. Three other workers were treated and released for injuries including burns and inhaling dust, she said.

The company said three other workers were treated at the plant's medical facility and released.

William Magyar, 44, of McKeesport, was cleaning a rental property near the plant when he said he heard alarms around 10 a.m.

"I figured it was a fire I didn't smell," Magyar said.

Elaine Lawrence, 53, whose son works at the plant, was lying on the couch at her Clairton home when her daughter told her there had been an explosion. The daughter drove her to the plant, but they weren't allowed in; they headed to a hospital, and that's when her son called.

"He said he had just passed where the explosion happened to go to the other block and suddenly he heard an explosion," Lawrence said. Martin Lawrence, 19, was not injured and remained at work, she said.

"I was real concerned, because that's my only son," she said.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Update on U.S. Steel Explosion at Clairton Works

John Packard (http://www.steelmarketupdate.com/pub/blog/posts/author/John-Packard) 9:01PM, July 14, 2010
On Wednesday morning there was an explosion at the “B” Battery at the U.S. Steel Clairton coke plant. The explosion injured twenty workers who were on site at the time.
The accident is the second for U.S. Steel during the past eight days. Their Gary Works facility suffered a major accident last Wednesday when an ore transfer car which is used to feed the blast furnaces fell twenty five feet injuring one employee and causing the company to shut down at least two blast furnaces.
Erin DiPietro, U.S. Steel spokesperson, provided two updates to Steel Market Update. One, shortly after noon on Wednesday and the second later that day. Steel Market Update chose to not go with the local news reports which had been referencing injuries to 11-15 individuals. As you can see from the U.S. Steel update provided to Steel Market Update on Wednesday evening the number was actually much higher:
“Today, 20 individuals were injured when an explosion and fire occurred at U. S. Steel’s Clairton Plant coke making operation. The incident occurred at approximately 9:30 a.m. while maintenance work was being performed in the basement of the B Battery. All other employees and contractors in the area at the time of the incident were safely evacuated from the area. Fourteen of the injured individuals were U. S. Steel employees and six were contractors. Three U. S. Steel employees were treated at the on-site medical facility. Seventeen total individuals were transported to local hospitals for treatment – 12 remain hospitalized. Members of our Medical Department are in close contact with all of the local hospitals that are treating the injured individuals. Our thoughts are with the individuals who were injured as well as their families.
In terms of Clairton’s operational status, B Battery is currently idle, but the rest of the plant is operating normally. We will begin assessing the area where the incident occurred to determine the extent of repairs and the impact on the operation of B Battery. Safety is a core value for our company and a full investigation into the cause of the incident is under way. We will be cooperating fully with the agencies involved in the investigation process as well as involved contractors.”
The coke battery are ovens used to make coke out of coal which is then used in the blast furnace along with iron ore and limestone to make pig iron (first step in the integrated steel making process).
SMU is checking with USS and other industry sources to see if we can ascertain whether this accident will impact production at Mon Valley or any other steel making facility.

[S.Artesian]

I used to work in the coke ovens at the former Great Lakes Steel in River Rouge, Michigan-- built on Zug Island, an island of slag in the Detroit River, with rats slightly larger than your average Nile crocodiles.

Nastiest job I ever had. This was what? 1971 I think. I remember the supposedly "fire-proof" protective jacket and pants I wore. I started out as a "scraper"-- literally using a scraper on a long pole to scrape the tar off the seams and edges of each cell when the door was removed to push the coke out into a railroad gondola car which would move it to the "quencher" to dump tons of water on it, before unloading the coke on the cooling wharf.

Of course, when you were "scraping" the tar off, the door to the oven was removed and the heat from the oven was right there in your face [we wore face shields on our hard hats]. Once I got "too close" when scraping, and the shoulder of my "fire-proof" jacket burst into flame.

Watching your clothes burn while you're still wearing them gives you a whole new perspective on life.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yea, it's definitely tough, grimy work. Everyday I came home from the works reeking of chemicals, with silica covering every inch of my clothes and filing every pore of my skin.

I never caught on fire, but the soles of my boots and the handle of my knife melted when I was working a boiler in a West Virginia power plant once. It was sort of like standing on a hot frying pan wearing two sticks of butter.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Glad to hear that everyone got out with their lives, even though some seem to have been severely injured.

Are incidents like this a common occurrence at these kind of steel plants?

[S.Artesian]

Glad to hear that everyone got out with their lives, even though some seem to have been severely injured.

Are incidents like this a common occurrence at these kind of steel plants?

Not to my recollection, but I'd have to check the US's OSHA statistics to be sure.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

An explosion so powerful that it blew out concrete-block walls rocked U.S. Steel's Clairton coke plant this morning, leaving 17 people with burns or other injuries ranging in severity from minor to life-threatening.

The patients were taken to UPMC Mercy, UPMC Presbyterian, UPMC McKeesport, Jefferson Regional and West Penn, which received three workers, two of them in critical condition.

A decontamination facility was set up at UPMC McKeesport, where the injured workers were treated initially before being sent to other hospitals, according to Gloria Kreps, UPMC spokeswoman.

"It is a miracle that no one was killed outright by the blast," said Allegheny County's emergency management chief, Bob Full.

Chief Full could not say yet what caused the blast, other than saying it was sparked by coke oven gas, which is produced in the coke-making process and is used to bake the impurities out of coal.

Helping in the investigation are the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Chief Full said the ATF usually investigates crimes, but in this case the agency was called in because of its expertise in determining what causes explosions.

"They have resources you can't believe," he said.

The explosion was reported at 9:37 a.m., and the resulting fire burned until about 2:45 p.m., Chief Full said.

Allegheny County spokesman Kevin Evanto said all workers at the plant had been accounted for.

"What I have right now is there was a fire and explosion in number 2 B battery and apparently there was flammable gas that ignited and exploded and the result was that [17] employees were transported to area hospitals. Some were severe," said Robert Szymanski, the director of OSHA's Pittsburgh office.

Jim Thompson, manager of the Allegheny County Air Quality Program, said initial reports from a Health Department inspector at the scene indicate the explosion may have been caused by a gas explosion at the B battery, the largest coke-making battery at the Clairton complex with 75 ovens. All operations at the battery have been shut down, he said.

"A coke oven battery uses coke oven gas to heat itself, and if there's a leak there's always a potential for an explosion, but right now that's pure speculation. I have no confirmation on that," Mr. Thompson said.

Later, Chief Full said there was no gas leak, but he was at a loss to explain what happened.

When the explosion occurred, the Health Department inspector was in a trailer about a quarter mile from the blast, he said.

"He said the windows of the trailer were rumbling pretty good when the explosion happened," Mr. Thompson said.

A "senior operator" at K&H Construction Inc., a U.S. Steel subcontractor with offices inside the coke plant, said employees were summoned to an emergency meeting shortly before 10 a.m.

"At the meeting we were told there was an explosion at B battery and the fire trucks were down there and they were going to suspend operations until they determine the cause," said the man, who would not give his name.

The man said the battery is centrally located in the plant, while most subcontractors are at the south end. He said he did not hear any explosion this morning.

There are 12 batteries at the coke works.

Dr. Larry Jones, director of the burn unit at West Penn Hospital, said he expected the three patients there to survive. But he said the two in critical condition, both men in their mid-50s, have chemical burns in their airways that complicate their situations.

One of those men has burns over 30 percent of his body; the other has burns to 10 percent. The third worker, a man in his mid-40s, is in serious condition with burns over 10 to 12 percent of his body and an ankle fracture.

All have burns to the neck, head and face, Dr. Jones said.

He did not identify the men. Family members were at the hospital but they didn't not want to talk to reporters, a spokeswoman said.

Six victims were taken by ambulance to UPMC Mercy Hospital. Doctors said all the men were covered in black soot when they arrived around 10:30 a.m. and had to be cleaned before they were treated.

One of the victims was treated for a soot-related injury and released.

The other five remain at the hospital. One is in critical condition because of an inhalation injury caused by heat, Dr. Alain Corcos said. The other four are in serious condition.

Dr. Corcos said all the victims, men with ages ranging from their 20s to 50s, suffer from second and third degree burns caused by flames.

He said their burns ranged from 15 to 40 percent of their bodies.

In September, a man was killed and another injured at an explosion at the plant.

Several State Street residents who live near the plant said they heard no explosion this morning.

Joanne Panza, 64, who was standing at the northern end of the plant this morning near her house as an ambulance siren wailed in the background, said she noticed that around 10:30 a.m. the coke works' hallmark smell became strikingly more pungent.

"I can tell you this, I smell it. It's better now, but it was a bad chemical smell before. The air seems to have cleared," Ms. Panza said.

Chief Full said no evacuations were ordered in Clairton or in Lincoln, the borough across the Monongahela River from the plant. The coke oven is at the rear of the plant, near the river, Chief Full said.

"The county has responded to many steel mill accidents over the years," he said. "This is a very dangerous business."

The Health Department said it would continue to monitor the air around the plant. Although the blast produced a black cloud, no long-lasting effects have been measured.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

From a guy that was there:


I was working there when it Happened, we were just starting doubling our train when it happened never heard anything except Ambulance's and then saw life flight, didnt know anything happened till we got called back to the yard office..... This follows a trestle collapse that happened about a week and a half ago at the Gary works leaving four Furnaces down there but only one guy was injured and it was minor.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I just heard from my uncle. 2 laborers and 5 pipefitters were injured; 3 critically.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

WSWS coverage of the explosion:

http://wsws.org/images/2010jul/j17-clai-mono-480.jpgA section of US Steel Clairton's mill near the site of Wednesday explosion is seen from across the Monongahela River
Nine workers remain hospitalized Friday, four in critical condition with burns over 10 to 40 percent of their bodies, as the result of an explosion and fire Wednesday morning at US Steel’s Clairton coke works, in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area.

In total, 20 workers were injured in the blast that occurred at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in Clairton’s B batteries. Workers were performing maintenance work when fumes from the coke battery ignited. The force of the explosion twisted steel beams and blasted down block walls. Parts of walls and pipes were strewn over a wide area. It took fire crews until nearly 3 p.m. to extinguish the resulting blaze.
Workers standing a few feet from the explosion site were enveloped in a fireball, Allegheny County’s Emergency Management Chief Robert Full said. The workers wear fireproof clothing, boots and hardhats on the job. Official say that some of the fireproof uniforms were burnt through.
Three workers were taken to the burn unit at West Penn Hospital, one by air; they are suffering from severe burns to the head, neck and face. Six of the injured were taken to UPMC Mercy with burns to their faces and extremities. Six others were taken to UPMC Presbyterian and one is being treated at UPMC McKeesport.
Two of those at West Penn Hospital remain in critical condition; both men have burns to their airways. Two of those at UPMC Mercy hospital burn unit remain in critical condition as well. Doctors at both hospitals expect the men to survive.
Fourteen of the injured workers work for US Steel, the other six for contractors—five of them are employed by Power Piping and are members of the steamfitters union.
The US Steel facility is located in Clairton, Pennsylvania, on more than 390 acres along the Monongahela River, 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. It is the largest coke producer in the country. According to the company’s website, the operation produces 4.7 million tons of coke a year and employs about 1,500 workers.

http://wsws.org/images/2010jul/j17-clai-mill-480.jpgAnother part of US Steel Clairton Works
Coke is produced by baking coal in ovens to 2,000 degrees Celsius to burn out all the impurities. The result is then used in the production of steel. A string of ovens is called a battery. The Clairton works has 12 batteries. The B battery is the largest, made up of 75 coke ovens.

US Steel both uses the coke in its own steel mills and sells it to other steelmakers. In addition to the coke, gases and many other chemicals are produced in the coke-making process. The Clairton works captures most of those gases and chemicals and reuses or sells them.
It is believed that gas leaking from one of the gas lines in the B Battery ignited Wednesday causing the powerful blast and fire. Investigators are trying to determine what ignited the gas.
Brian Doyle, one of the injured steamfitters, told a local television station that his gas detector was sounding the alarm, but that the crew remained inside trying to seal the leaking pipe.
“I just saw like a wind tunnel come at me and just the loudest boom I’ve ever heard,” Doyle told KDKA television.
“It shot me across the floor—in the air across the floor,” he said. “A beam came down, hit me.”
Brian’s cousin, Richard Doyle, was also injured in the explosion. He is in critical condition, in UPMC-Mercy hospital with burns over 40 percent of his body. He is currently in a drug-induced coma. Doctors often place burn victims in such comas as the only way of controlling the pain, as the body needs time to heal.
A similar explosion occurred at the mill in September, which killed one worker and critically injured another. Nicholas Revetta, 32, also of Power Piping of Pittsburgh, was 32 and married with two young children
“When you’re out and you see all the ambulances flying past, thoughts do come back of my husband,” Maureen Revetta told Channel 11 news.
“They had just walked into the gas exchange area a couple minutes before the explosion occurred,” said Revetta, speaking of the accident that killed her husband last year.
She said that she was speaking out because she did not want to see more workers injured or killed. “I think I was looking more to OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] to do that for me because I thought that was their job, to provide an explanation as to what happened and to make the workplace safe for the men that have to go there every day,” she said. “I just really feel for the families of the men who were injured.”
A steelworker coming off the day shift after the explosion Wednesday asked the WSWS not to use his name. “We don’t really know what happened. They told us around 9:30 about the blast and fire, but then for us to continue working. I work in the C control room, that’s where a person was killed in September.
“US Steel hires contractors to perform much of the maintenance work, they are all over the mill. It saves US Steel money, but the contractors don’t know the mill the way people who have been working there their whole lives do. The contracting firms just want their men to get in, get the job done and get out.”
A spokesperson for US Steel said that production had been resumed in much of the B battery, and that it should be fully brought back online within a week. Production in the rest of the mill never stopped.
OSHA indicated that it was investigating the source of the blast Wednesday. However, the agency closed the investigation into September’s explosion without ever finding a cause, and the company has not been fined. While OSHA officials said they could not comment on the recent accident, they did say it was not related to September’s explosion, because they took place in different batteries.
According to government documents, OSHA has fined US Steel’s Clairton works only minimal amounts in the past. In 2006 a workers lost both his legs when he was struck by a piece of equipment. The company was fined just $7,000 for the incident. In 2004, the company was fined $3,400 after a worker was seriously injured in a train accident.
For its part, the United Steelworkers, the bargaining agent for workers at the Clairton mill, is also defending the company. Like OSHA officials, USW officials refused to comment about Wednesday’s explosion, saying that they do not comment on on-going investigations. Wayne Ranick, a USW spokesman, said that the union would wait “for the conclusion of the investigations and the hearing of the findings before making any additional comment.”
“The investigation is under way,” Ranick said in Pittsburgh Thursday. “It has been under way for a while. It does take them time. There’s a lot of diligence going on. We expect it to take some time because it is a comprehensive process. Both union and company safety officials are participating, as is OSHA.”
The USW did not demand that its workers be withdrawn from the mill Wednesday to allow investigators to determine whether it was safe to continue working. The union went along with company officials, assuring workers it was safe to work in nearby buildings. Emphasizing the danger that might still exist, government investigators did not enter the B battery until Friday out of fear of remaining gas and structural damage to the building.
In April 2009, US Steel put on hold a $1.2 billion capital improvement project at its Clairton works because of a drop in steel demand as a result of the global slump. The company had broke ground on the project the previous October just as the economic crisis was taking hold. US Steel has been hard hit by falling demand. It is a major supplier for the auto and appliance industries, which saw sales collapse in 2008-09. US Steel is also a major exporter of steel to China to meet its expanding demand for steel used in construction. The firm’s stock had climbed to a high of $180 a share in June 2008, but has fallen to less than $50 a share.
Clairton suffered tremendously from the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s and remains a depressed community of 7,800 residents. The median income is about $26,000, or half of the national average. Only a small number of residents work in the mill, and the company uses few local contractors or suppliers.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Investigations need to be brought soon in order to figure out what exactly happen & whether or not any criminal activity came about, such as broken safety protocols, shortcuts taken, etc.

[this is an invasion]

Investigations need to be brought soon in order to figure out what exactly happen & whether or not any criminal activity came about, such as broken safety protocols, shortcuts taken, etc.

Really?