​Explosions rocked DuPont plant 50 years ago

The day before, a series of explosions “turned the DuPont synthetic rubber plant in Louisville into an inferno of flame, smoke and flying pieces of metal,” the newspaper reported. At one point in the afternoon, authorities thought they were clear to let people back in — that it had become safe.But they made a mistake.

“It wasn’t safe,” the newspaper reported. “There was another explosion. Six bodies reported had been seen and were about to be removed when another blast ripped the plant about 5:45 p.m. Rescue workers then retreated, carrying their injured comrades. The dead were left inside.

“Our hearts are sick for the families of the missing men,” H. Burton Eaton Jr., the plant manager, was quoted as saying.

The Bingham family’s media holdings at the time, including The Courier-Journal and WHAS11 television, devoted a lot of resources to covering the massive series of explosions that destroyed nearly all the plant and caused so much pain. Tuesday evening, WHAS’s Doug Proffittbroadcast a report on the disaster, including some recollections from eye witnesses. It marked the first live broadcast for the television station and it was on the air when that second blast shook the plant.

In the end, 12 workers died and there were at least 37 other injuries, I later found out when preparing a Rubbertown timeline for stories I wrote in the early 2000s about toxic air and western Louisville’s tension-filled relationship with the Rubbertown complex of chemical plants that have lined the Ohio River since the 1940s.

That history of fear, anger and distrust from past Rubbertown explosions and decades of chemical emissions most recently played a role in a clash over two methane gas production facilities supported by Mayor Greg Fischer as an environmentally friendly way to deal with food and distillery waste. One of the proposed plants has been pulled but the other remains in play. The mayor has been seeking to calm methane plant concerns, while appealing for open minds.

As my colleague Phillip M. Bailey wrote this week:

    The West End has “suffered from environmental problems created by our community’s past” and residents “deserve to have their valid concerns heard and answered,” Fischer said in a statement Monday. But the mayor added that residents “also deserve to hear the science and facts about the waste-reducing, renewable-energy-generating investments.”

DuPont was rocked by explosions again in 1969. A tank blast at the former Borden plant (now Momentive) in 1985 killed three workers. Railcars and plants also periodically leaked, sometimes causing injuries, often rattling nerves.

In the mid-1990s, my predecessor, Andrew Melnycovych followed up another Rubbertown accident with a story that started out this way:

    About once a week, the wail of sirens signals residents that another spill, leak or fire has occurred at one of the nine major plants in Rubbertown. Then there are the millions of pounds of chemicals, some of them known or suspected to cause cancer, that the plants emit into the air each year. “I’d love to move away from here. It’s dangerous,” said Joyce Hannold. But her family can’t afford to move from their Ralph Avenue home of 22 years, so “you get used to it. You just get used to it.”

Rubbertown companies have dramatically cut back on their toxic air emissions, in large part to pressure from the community and Louisville’s Strategic Toxic Air Reduction program.

It was a major success as noted by political leaders and members of the public alike.

“The quality of air has definitely changed,” social and environmental advocate Gracie Lewis, active with the group Rubbertown Emergency Action, told me earlier this summer. “Until we had the STAR program, there were leaks all the time, and you could smell the fumes.”

When you work with large volumes of chemicals, some under intense pressure, and move them around on rail cars, accidents are bound to happen. And they still do.

There was the 2011 explosion at Carbide Industries, for example, that killed two workers and injured two others, and prompted shelter-in-place warnings for one mile around the plant. And a train derailment and chemical spill near West Point the following year that forced mass evacuations.

Fortunately for everyone, there hasn’t been another chemical disaster like the one that leveled the Dupont plant on Aug. 25, 1965.

Read more from source:
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/tech/science/watchdog-earth/2015/08/25/explosions-rocked-dupont-plant-50-years-ago/32347111/