"a blast and a fire that caused significant burns to the man’s...."

Here is an interesting incident involving maintenance and good housekeeping practices. Here is the recent story:

A university contractor burned by chemical reaction at campus maintenance building, fire rescue in the USA one afternoon during the week of February 17, 2019. The contractor was burned after chemicals reacted in a maintenance building on campus Monday afternoon. The local county fire rescue responded to the incident at the employee-only building at about 3 p.m.. The contractor was the only person in the environmental and hazardous waste building, near the university police department building, at the time. No students were involved or affected by the incident. According to the local county fire rescue spokesman, the worker was transferring chemicals for disposal from a 50 gallon metal drum to a 50 gallon polydrum when there was a static charge. 

The county fire rescue spokesman reported that the fire caused significant burns to the man’s upper body, chest, arms, hands and face. “He was wearing eye protection, which was probably a very fortunate thing because he could have easily been blinded had he not had them on,” the county fire rescue spokesman said. The chemicals, he said, were a combination of different kinds of metal powders, including aluminum, magnesium and chromium, as well as other substances. Firefighters used a special fire extinguisher to put the fire out, which was burning likely higher than 200 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of the incident. By 4:30, the 50 gallon drum was outside the building and the temperature had subsided to 130 degrees. The contractor was conscious and alert when he was transferred by local County Fire Rescue to a nearby hospital.

We pray that the worker recovers fully from his injuries.

No doubt one of the first questions will be why was the waste not placed in a plastic barrel originally? Next question will be what caused the spark that started the fire. Sparks can occur from something as simple as static electricity. Or the contractor was using a metal shovel to scope the material into the plastic barrel. We wonder if the worker was using a metal shovel.

When we train workers about good housekeeping practices involving aluminium fines or dust. A worker in our industry has to be very careful not to create a dust cloud when disposing/placing/emptying the dust into a container. Remember the container needs to be plastic. Not a steel drum.

The Aluminium Times magazine published an article in the past about the importance of good housekeeping practices. The publication can be found here.

Please comment.