Monday, April 12, 2021

Explosion in Columbus, OH paint plant

Via USA Today, this incident: 
COLUMBUS, Ohio — One person was killed andeight others injured Thursday after an explosion started a fire at a paint factory in Ohio's capital city. 

The two-alarm fire started around midnight at Majestic Paints on the city's Near East Side and involved at least one explosion. The paint company has had a history of workplace safety violations, including some with the potential to cause death, according to a federal workplace investigation.

Around 40 employees were believed to be in the building when the fire started. Fire officials said many employees were able to evacuate on their own, however, two had to be rescued by fire crews.

One of them had suffered extensive burns and was reported trapped between a railing and another object until a rescue crew could extricate and remove that person in a Stokes basket, according to fire radio traffic...

This CSB summary is interesting: 

  • A fire and explosion occurred at approximately 12:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, April 8, 2021.
  • Yenkin-Majestic manufactures and markets industrial coatings that include acrylics, alkyds, coil and powder coatings, epoxies, primers, and urethanes.
  • The incident occurred in the OPC Polymers unit at the Yenkin-Majestic facility. The company reports that it has 180 employees.
  • The company reported the following casualties: 1 fatal, 5 hospitalized and 4 non-serious injuries.
  • Twenty-one employees were reported to have been in the facility at the time of the incident.
  • Incident resulted in substantial property damage, more than $1 million. 
  • A building in the OPC Polymer unit collapsed as a result of the incident.
  • Emergency responders reported that a local resident self-evacuated. No evacuation was ordered by the City of Columbus.
  • Materials stored onsite include maleic anhydride, phthalic anhydride, xylene, and mineral spirits. The company has not yet provided the quantities of the material at the facility at the time of the incident.
  • The OPC Polymer unit was engaged in normal operations at the time of the incident. The material being produced was manufactured in a batch process. 
Hard for me to fully understand what was going on there, and what exactly happened - will be worthwhile following. 

I guess I don't think that paint factories typically explode? Hard to see how maleic or phthalic anhydride would be all that explosive as well. Guess we'll have to wait for the final report. 

1 comment:

  1. This company made a lot of old-school solventborne alkyd paints, so there are plenty of substances with flammable vapors around.

    The remaining mom & pop paint companies are getting murdered by larger competitors like Sherwin-Williams, PPG, Behr, etc right now. I'm not familiar with Yenkin-Majestic specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised if these folks were in survival mode. Modernizing a plant for improved safety isn't an option when a company is barely getting by.

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20