I suspect you may have heard about this tragic event at the Connecticut power plant but in case you have not, here’s a good article recapping the story. Officials investigate massive Connecticut power plant explosion that killed five | New Jersey Real-Time News – – NJ.com.
No doubt it will be some time before the precise cause of the explosion, which killed at least five people, is determined. It appears, however, that the gas lines were being tested when the explosion occurred.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, the agency responsible for investigating such events, was mobilizing a team from Colorado yesterday.
This explosion is reminiscent of an explosion at the Slim Jim factory in North Carolina about a year ago.
According to the report,
Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They’ve identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.
The board voted recently to recommend that national and international code writers strengthen their guidelines to require outdoor venting of gas lines or an approved safety plan to do it indoors.
Maybe it is just me but it seems like it should not take that long to figure out how to ‘strengthen guidelines to require outdoor venting of gas lines’ or to write guidelines for ‘an approved safety plan to do it indoors.’ I understand how revamping health care is extremely complex, but come on – venting gas to the outside or having a safety plan to do it indoors?!
Tags: gas explosion, industrial accident, Nash and Associates
Medical Malpractice and Catastrophic Injury Litigation | Eye Opener: The Nash & Associates Blog 
February 24, 2010 at 6:26 pm |
[…] gas line purge was being conducted at the time. For a reminder on the details of this event, see our posting filed that same day in February. You can also watch a news report on the investigation into the […]