"There was no smoke when I left...."

Around the globe institutions of higher learning (e.g., colleges & universities) are educating some of our future leaders. We used “some” because we acknowledge that there are many leaders in our industry who did not go to college. Regardless, the colleges and universities have played an important role in education, research, etc. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incidents involving institutions of higher learning. Here is a recent story:

A local fire department responded to a call of a fire in the research labs of a major university in the Midwest United States at approximately 6 p.m. one evening during the week of October 26, 2015.

The assistant fire chief for local fire department, said the fire started due to molten aluminum falling through the floor of the machine shop and landing on some totes filled with pieces of plastic scraps. The plastic smoldered from roughly 4 p.m. until the fire was extinguished a little after 6 p.m.

"There are access panels from the shop floor which lead down to the basement area," The assistant fire chief for local fire department said. "The plastic worked its way on top of the totes and smoldered on the plastic material."

A technician in the shop, was teaching a lab in the afternoon. The technician poured the molten aluminum for graduate students and extinguished some of the metal that fell onto the floor. Neither the technician nor his students noticed any problems when they left the lab.

"There was no smoke when I left – no smoke, no nothing," the lab technician said. "Then my department head emailed me after I left, saying there was smoke. Then he emailed me again and said the fire department had been called.

"It was a freak accident." The local fire department assistant chief said there were roughly twenty totes stored in the basement under the shop. The local fire department pulled all affected totes and saturated them with a mixture of water and foam to ensure there were no embers left. No one was injured in the fire.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is glad that no one was injured in this incident. We chose to leave out the university name and location to prevent embarrassment.

The APSB hates to make broad statements (it’s true, we do), but in our opinion colleges and universities underestimate the hazards associated with molten metal. It dumbfounds us when college students proudly show off their molten metal burns. Because of their inexperience many students are in serious danger when handling molten metal without proper supervision. Many operate under a false safety belief. The belief that their procedure is correct only because they did not have an incident. It is only revealed to be hazard when an incident occurs. The APSB has reached out to numerous heads of engineering, metallurgical, etc. of colleges and universities to make them aware of the safety hazards that were seen in a press release or youtube video that was posted. Every time the response was “we were unaware”. The APSB has posted incidents were molten metal explosions, and dust/fine explosions have occurred in a university facility. It is our wish that more in our industry reach out to their local colleges and universities and begin a dialogue. We acknowledge many in our industry sponsor summer internships, scholarships, plant tours, guest lectures, etc. We just hope that these aluminum companies also talk about best safety practices.

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