"fire over..the melter...no injuries..."

Fire always seem to breakout at the most importune times. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incidents that have happened in the middle of the night, on weekends, during maintenance shutdowns etc. Here is a recent story of a fire breaking out before dawn:

An aluminum plant located in Goose Creek, South Carolina in the USA is operating as usual following a fire at the plant on Thursday April 21, 2016.

Officials with the Goose Creek Fire Department confirmed crews responded to a fire at JW Aluminum Mount Holly plant in Goose Creek. The call came in at 5:40 a.m. on Thursday morning. Goose Creek Rural Fire Department was the lead responding agency.

The Brand and Marketing Manager for JW Aluminum says the fire is still under investigation. It did occur in melting area. She says there were no injuries and all emergency response procedures were followed at the time of the fire.

The plant continues to operate as usual and the Brand and Marketing Manager says the company does not anticipate any supply disruptions to their customers.

“Although we do everything possible to prevent incidents like this from occurring, they are not at all atypical in our industry,” said JW Aluminum Chief Executive Officer, “Safety is our main priority and zero injuries is our goal.”

We commend JW Aluminum on notifying the local emergency management system to put out the fire. We firmly believe that every incident, not matter how mundane it may seem can be a learning process.

We chose to include the company name on this post for two reasons; there were no injuries, and JW Aluminum’s communication with the news media. The importance of communication with news media during and immediately after an incident (that they are aware of) is very important. Please watch the video.

The reporter mentioned that he was inside the plant gate when he was escorted out by manager who was arriving for work. Rather on dwelling on how the news media got inside the gate, we would rather discuss that once it became known that the news media was inside the gate, they were sent out. Whomever directed the news media out, should be commended for doing that. All too many times the APSB will view news media videos that were shot within the plant gates.

Lastly and most importantly the news media were provided information from the company itself. The APSB has talked about the importance of effective communication during emergencies. Too many times a lack of information forces the news media to make assumptions. We are aware of many incidents that the news media makes into international stories that could have been stopped with a little information from the aluminium company.

This is an incident that should be reviewed with plant management on what should occur when an incident occurs. First, acknowledge the incident, call for outside assistance, make sure the news media are outside the gate, provide information to the news media, etc. In most cases this story would die down, but we posted the story! We chose to post this story not to pick on or demean JW Aluminum but to hopefully show other companies what a good company response can be. Keep up the good work JW Aluminum.

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