WASHINGTON, D.C. — An investigative agency says two chemical companies should have done a better job identifying possible safety hazards with a procedure that was being done at a Kanawha County chemical plant where a December 2020 explosion claimed a worker’s life.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) has released its 129-page final report into the Dec. 8, 2020 fire and explosion at the Optima Belle Plant.
The report makes fifteen recommendations to Optima Belle and the chemical company Clearon.
Optima Belle was making a sanitizing compound for Clearon. It was in a dryer where water was being removed when it exploded sending debris through that area of the plant and striking a methanol pipe that caught fire. Several workers were injured. The blast claimed the life of John Gillenwater, 42, of Hurricane.
The explosion caused an estimated $33.1 million property damage.
“Our report identifies a number of factors that led to this needless tragedy,” CSB Chairperson Steve Owens said in a news release announcing the final report. “In addition to issues with the production process, OSHA’s and EPA’s regulations do not adequately protect against hazards presented by reactive chemicals. Stronger regulations addressing reactive hazards will help keep similar incidents from occurring in the future, prevent deaths, and help protect workers at these facilities and the families who live nearby.”
Optima Belle offers services to other companies that have raw materials. Optima takes those materials and produces a final product. That’s what it was doing with the materials from Clearon when the explosion occurred. There was over-pressurization in the dryer causing what investigators described as a “runaway chemical reaction.”
According to the CSB news release, “The CSB identified that the facility did not adequately understand the potential for, analyze the hazards of, or detect and mitigate the self-accelerating reaction. Also contributing to the incident was the fact that the company for whom Optima Belle was producing the chemical – Clearon– did not transmit sufficient process safety information to Optima Belle, as well as both companies’ ineffective process safety management systems.”