"firefighters were confronted with a dust fire ....."

 

The importance of housekeeping comes to some when an incident occurs in their workplace because of poor housekeeping. Here is a recent incident emphasizing the need for good housekeeping practices.

The local firefighters were mobilized for many hours on Saturday April 30 for a fire in the remelt factory, an aluminum smelting company, (in Western Europe_, in the industrial zone of (omitted). Hired in the early afternoon, the twenty firefighters were confronted with a dust fire above an oven hood. Extinguishing operations ended at 8 p.m.

All indications are no one was injured in this incident. Which is great. It is safe to assume that aluminum fines were allowed to accumulate. When aluminum fines are allowed to accumulate an incident will eventually occur. This plant should be thankful that the hood was not knocked or bumped. Resulting in the fines falling like snow. All it would have take was the falling fines to find an ignition source. Then a flash fire would have occurred. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog have posted numerous incidents where aluminum fines became airborne and ignited. Workers have been injured, workers have been killed.

Light Metal Age Magazine had a recent article on housekeeping. The articles can be downloaded here.

 

While Aluminium Times magazine had some articles about aluminium fine fires and explosions.

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