GALLATIN, Tenn. — Three workers were critically burned Friday at a Middle Tennessee chemical plant, just one day after company officials attended the funeral of one of two workers killed in an earlier fire.
The Friday fire injured a total of five workers and was the third this year at the Hoeganaes (HAY'-gan-eez) Corp. plant in Gallatin.
The plant employs about 175 people making metal powders for automotive and industrial uses. The two previous accidents occurred after flammable dust accumulated in the air and combusted, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board in findings two weeks ago.
In a news release from May 11, Investigator-in-Charge Johnnie Banks criticized the company for knowing of the danger the dust posed and not adequately addressing it. When his team inspected the plant, it found 2- to 3-inch layers of dust on surfaces throughout the facility and dust was visible in the air, according to the release.
Gallatin Assistant Fire Chief Tommy Dale said the latest fire was caused by a gas leak. Both the Tennessee Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the Chemical Safety Board are investigating.
Hoeganaes Vice President of Human Resources Mike Mattingly was in town to attend the Thursday funeral the employee who succumbed last week to his burns from the January flash fire.
Mattingly said the company was "devastated" by the latest accident.
"Our number one concern in priority is the affected employees and their families," he said.
Dale said the fire occurred in the furnace room of the plant, where 10 to 15 people work. He said this was different from the one in January.
According to the CSB, the Jan. 31 flash fire occurred as two maintenance mechanics on the overnight shift inspected a broken bucket elevator that was downstream of a furnace. When they restarted the elevator, the movement lofted combustible iron dust into the air. The dust ignited and flames engulfed the workers.
The second on March 29 happened when a plant engineer was replacing igniters on a furnace and inadvertently dislodged combustible iron dust. The dust engulfed him and ignited a fireball.
Banks said in the news release that the accumulation of metal dust at the factory "was of particular concern as metal dust flash fires present a greater burn injury threat than flammable gas or vapor flash fires. Metal dust fires have the potential to radiate more heat and some metals burn at extremely high temperatures."
There was no question the company knew much of the dust was combustible, Banks found. Company documents showed that last year Hoeganaes submitted 23 dust samples from the Gallatin facility to an independent laboratory and 14 were found to be combustible.
Investigators also found that the company had documented multiple reports of flash fires during repairs on furnace belts at their facility in Cinnaminson, N.J., where Hoeganaes is headquartered. Someone was killed in a 1996 accident there and an accident in 2000 injured two others.
TOSHA earlier this week issued $42,900 in citations to Hoeganaes after an investigation into the January and March accidents found 12 serious violations, spokesman Jeff Hentschel said. But neither TOSHA nor its federal counterpart, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have rules governing combustible dust.
The TOSHA citations that mention the dust at the plant cite rules about workplace cleanliness and employee training.
The Chemical Safety Board in 2006 recommended that OSHA develop a standard to address combustible dust explosions. In 2009, the agency agreed and it is currently in the early stages of rulemaking, according to a news release from the CSB.