Fire Destroys Chemical Plant Firefighters Unsure of Chemicals Involved, Upper Darby, PA, United States 1/5/2000

CSB Incident Number NRC Report Number Board Ref. Number 2000-4566 None Reported None

Date of Report Update No CSB Action 1/6/2000 - 1:40 AM

----- A dozen families were displaced and got shelter from the American Red Cross after a chemical plant was destroyed by fire. No major injuries were reported.

``We want to make that they have all of their emergency needs,'' Shelley McCaffrey, a spokewoman for the southeastern Pennsylvania chapter of the Red Cross, said early today.

She said there were 35 to 40 people in the 12 families that were accepting aid in the form of food, motel vouchers and clothing vouchers as a result of Tuesday night's fire.

The flames consumed the walls of the Advanced Chemicals Inc. building, leaving only the steel frame behind. Even as the flames burned down, firefighters worried about what chemicals might be contained in smoke billowing from the factory and also worried about the structure collapsing.

The prevailing wind blew most of the smoke away from a nearby residential area, but a block of houses next to the burning building was evacuated anyway. Firefighters set up temporary shelter for the residents at the borough hall and a nearby church.

All workers inside the factory at the time made it out safely, firefighters said. Fire officials said some firefighters received minor injuries and they were also worried about the possibility of the building collapsing.

Firefighters were uncertain what Advance Chemicals made at the site, saying that all they knew was that the company worked with powder-based chemicals. Officials planned to meet with the company's owners and call up air sampling crews.

Early on, firefighters said they were hampered by low water pressure, but they seemed to gain the upper hand as the fire ran out of material to burn.

Some neighbors said they heard a blast and came out of their homes to see the building on fire. Firefighters said a propane tank in a forklift in the plant may have caught fire, setting off the blaze.

Sources ( * indicates the original source) Source Details Media - Associated Press * 01-05-2000 0434EST

The site this came from has many stories of interest. Check it out!:

Link:

http://www.humanitarian.net/challenges.html

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), January 06, 2000

Answers

And this sort of thing, NEVER happened prior to Y2K? You are rapidly becoming the "disasters are us" guy.....

Do some research and find a connection, please. ANY connection will do.

-- Ynott (Ynott@incorruptible.com), January 06, 2000.

Ynott,

Lay off, Ynott . There were so many of these types of threads BEFORE the rollover that the sysops added a category for them. No whining then, so I don't see why we need it now. You think anyone is going to come out and state "Yep, that embedded chip made our plant go boom"?

Carl, unless there is a stated Y2K connection in the story, you might want to preface the title with "OT" (off topic), so Ynott can skip the thread and quit whining at you. Keep up the posting, I find it most interesting.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), January 06, 2000.

Roland, Not much chance of having a y2k connection mentioned in news stories such as this...not gonna happen. Like Shockwave has said here in this forum...(I'm paraphrasing)...it's about insurance and liability. Good example would be the Silicone Breast Implant issue.

I look at it like this...if a serious disaster is reported, I become curious about computer malfunction or glitch and follow the story. It is up to the experts to investigate the cause, and investigations are a process...they take time...even years. So I don't look for the answers right away. But one should look for patterns, since this is how intelligence is derived. If something happens once, it is an isolated incident, twice...a coincidence, maybe, three times or more...a pattern is then noted. This is the basis for intel gathering.

It is wise to question, but not rush to judgement for the margin of error is high with both.

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), January 06, 2000.

To Dee and knott

In Re: Corporate responses to these recent accidents

It does no harm to the Corporation to claim that these incidents are not Y2K related. The Company would, at least initially, get the benefit of a defense from the insurance company.(however, the Insurance company would do its own investigation and could later deny the claim anyway) It is at least a good first position, unless the Company was absolutely, positively certain that it was a Y2k failure. To submit a claim and actually misrepresent the nature of the accident is where the Corporate Counsel or Corporate officers need to draw the line and but not realistically before.

-- lurking , as usual (lawyer@aol.com), January 06, 2000.