Video of deadly chemical blast in West Virginia
Security cameras caught the explosion Thursday night in Institute, West Virginia that killed one worker and critically burned a second person. The Kanawha County Commission and members of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board have scheduled a press conference at 3 p.m. today to discuss the blast and fire at the Bayer CropScience plant.
From the Charleston Gazette:
Bayer officials said the explosion appears to have occurred in a chemical tank that was added during a recent routine maintenance shutdown of a pesticide unit.
The 4,000-gallon cylindrical tank was used to clean up wastes created during the production of the pesticide Larvin, said Bayer site manager Nick Crosby.
“It appears to have occurred right at the back end of the process where we treat process residues,” Crosby said. “[But] I can’t tell you today what caused the incident. We don’t know yet.”
WCHS-TV has video from a security camera that caught the initial blast. Also, watch coverage from WCHS-TV.
Click here for a long list of video links of this incident from WSAZ-TV. The top link has security camera video of the flash from the blast and the sound of the explosion. Just below it is raw video of the fire. Further down is video from the explosion and fire in the 1990s.
The plant has a long history of safety violations and a previous deadly fire and explosion. Read more from SundayGazetteMail.com.
The paper also reports that the possibility of a chemical disaster of major proportions has long worried residents in the Kanawha Valley. Click here.
Institute made news in 1985 and again in 1990 after a series of leaks at its Union Carbide plant. At least one of those leaks involved the chemical that killed 3500 people near a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in 1984. Read details.
