Saturday, January 8, 2000

Fires out at Rouge Steel plant; two workers suffer minor injuries

Associated Press

DEARBORN -- Molten steel exploded in a vat Friday morning at the problemplagued Rouge Steel Co. foundry, sparking a series of small fires and causing two minor injuries, a fire official said.

The fires caused little damage, but the explosion caused heavy structural damage to the basic oxygen furnace building, said Battalion Chief Ken Kajkowski of the Dearborn Fire Department. The explosion occurred about 5:30 a.m. on the fourth floor of the seven-floor building. Kajkowski said oxygen was being injected into the vat with a device called a lance when there was "a malfunction of some kind" and the molten steel exploded.

"There were probably any number of small residual fires," he said. "Anything that's below the temperature of the steel."

Workers were evacuated from the building while Dearborn and Rouge Steel firefighters put out the fires. An all-clear was declared at 9 a.m., he said.

Two of the workers were treated at a local hospital for minor injuries and released, Kajkowski said.

The cause of the explosion was being investigated, Kajkowski said. Rouge Steel officials did not return telephone messages.

Today's incident was the latest in a series of accidents at the 1,100-acre Rouge complex, which comprises six Ford Motor Co. plants and Rouge Steel.

"It seems like it's always something out there," Kajkowski said. On Aug. 19, one worker died and four others were treated after being overcome by fumes while performing routine maintenance work at Rouge Steel. Francis P. Kidd, 44, a journeyman boilermaker from Gladstone, died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

A small explosion July 19 injured one worker and destroyed the roof of an abandoned garage.

On Oct. 15, an estimated five to 10 tons of molten metal escaped from a blast furnace at Rouge Steel and seeped through a wall. No one was injured by the 2,600-degree mixture of raw iron and slag.

At a Ford power plant within the complex, a boiler undergoing routine maintenance exploded Feb. 1, killing six employees and injuring 14 others. State regulators later found 15 workplace safety violations for which Ford was fined $1.5 million.

Source: The Detroit News

http://www.detnews.com/search/navi.htm

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), March 19, 2000