Belle, W.Va. (WCHS) – It has been more than four years since a fatal explosion of the chemical ban in Kanawha County killed a worker and injured three more, began a big fire and laid a car restaurant with almost half a mile away.
The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal authority that was commissioned to investigate chemical incidents and dangers, found the cause of the explosion and fire from 2020 in Belle together with a variety of mistakes that contributed to explosion of a chemical dryer.
A recently published video makes it clear what happened, but notes that other federal authorities ignored the authorization to regulate reactive chemicals that ignored the concerns of the return of 2002.
“The CSB believes that Osha and the EPA have to strengthen their regulations for reactive chemicals and regulations,” said Sylvia Johnson, board member of the Chemical Safety,. “Treating reactive chemical dangers helps to prevent similar incidents from it.”
The video also shows Clearon, which spent the work on Optima Belle and did not report the dangers of an explosive self -reaction at low temperatures because it had not found an informative study.
Problems with responsibility, if a job is directed to another facility and the difficulties in managing the process, were also problems.
An failure to test in the laboratory, in addition to the problems with the selection and design of the dryer, where the explosion took place, contributed to the explosion.
Instead of leading to a few broken test glasses, this error ended with a killer explosion that caused #33 million damage and threw half a mile debris.
“One of the problems with this incident is that we did not have chemical data about it. It was the first day of this process,” recalled the emergency management of Kanawha County, CW Signman.
There are efforts to learn with which the rescue workers in local plants are exposed to.
“We are looking for the proprietary information, keep it confidential and still keep it proprietary, but if you don't work the event owner,” said Tom Keefer, member of the Kanawha-Putman emergency planning council.
The CSB lacks authority to draw up regulations, but can make recommendations.