"an explosion in an aluminum smelter, among others..."

 

Prior to the explosive growth of the internet and social media knowledge of incidents were for the most constrained to small region surrounding the plant. Our interest in finding out about incidents is not place blame on the company, nor the worker(s) involved. We can extend that to include we do not place blame on the region nor the country. We hope by bringing awareness to these incidents we can prevent a recurrence. Here is a recent incident. Which lacks detail but can still be used by the reader:

The authorities also attended to three outbreaks of forest fires, two vehicular fires , two social demonstrations, two suicides, a liquefied petroleum gas explosion, a fall from a height, an explosion in an aluminum smelter, among others.

The above paragraph was found in a South American newspaper. Further investigation could find not additional information. The paragraph intrigued us by it’s brevity. We pray for the two individuals who committed suicide. The magazine Light Metal Age recently published an article about mental health during the pandemic. It can be downloaded here.

We pray that anyone who is dealing with depression of suicidal thoughts will understand one thing. You are loved. In your darkness you may fell alone, abandoned, hurt, ashamed, etc. But, you are loved, you may not feel it, you may not care. But, you are loved. Please ask for help. If you feel you did ask for help and it was either ignored or discounted. Ask again. Keep asking for help till you get it. We gave a presentation to 150 workers. At the end we talked about love. In the second row a person had tears rolling down their face as I spoke. We wished they were tears of joy but knew they were tears of sadness. I knew I could not stop for fear of placing unwanted attention on this individual who crying in the second row. So, I finished and the individual sat alone as her coworkers departed. I sat next to her. Wiping away tears she looked up at me and said “Mr. Alex I did not think anyone loves me.” I responded “I don’t know your name, but I love you. If you got injured or killed here while at work or outside these gates I would be awful bad.” This worker was in the midst of depression and could not fathom anyone loving her. I left the woman with the human resources manager. I pray for her weekly.

Love is why we do this blog. Love for strangers. Because if it was not for love we would not do it. As we have written about in the past. This blog is the hardest thing we do. But, we have learned that one can do something difficult if it is done for love. If that makes sense, that is what we keep saying to ourselves.

“an explosion in an aluminum smelter, among others.” Explosions in our experience happen for a few reasons in aluminium smelters. They include but are not limited to: electric arc, fuel (e.g., natural gas, diesel), molten metal, dust. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incident involving one or more of those hazards in the past.

We are humbled that many readers will print out our blog posts and review them with their personnel. How to review this blog post that only includes “an explosion in an aluminum smelter” may seem difficult. But, in reality it is not. We would recommend ask the simple question: “If an explosion would occur (at our workplace) where would it occur?” That simple question can result in a meaningful discussion that may identify a weakness or an area that was previously overlooked. We hope every readers asks the question.

 

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