CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Bayer CropScience plant where a worker died in a Thursday night explosion has a rocky safety history, including major federal violations three years ago and a state enforcement action earlier this year.
Federal, state and local officials have just begun a detailed investigation of Thursday's explosion and fire, which left a second worker with serious burns. Answers about the cause could take weeks or months.
However, workplace safety officials said their latest examinations found considerable problems at the sprawling Institute facility.
"We found serious issues related to process safety," said Prentice Cline, assistant area director for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "There were some significant deficiencies."
Two OSHA inspectors were at the plant Friday afternoon, and a five-person team from the federal Chemical Safety Board was to arrive in Charleston later in the evening.
Board Chairman John Besland said his agency would look for root causes and for flaws in programs meant to prevent such accidents.
"The issues are broader than just - something blew up," said Bresland, who by coincidence was at The Greenbrier on Friday for a presentation with state business leaders.
Witnesses to the explosion reported seeing a red fireball and feeling the blast as far away as Charleston. The explosion, at about 10:25 p.m. Thursday, was heard at least as far away as Mink Shoals.
Plant worker Barry Withrow was killed and a second employee with serious burns was transported for treatment at a Pittsburgh hospital.
"This is a very sad day for the Institute site family," Bayer said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these employees during this very difficult time."
Thousands of residents between South Charleston and the Putnam County line were advised to take shelter in their homes, and the main highways through the area - Interstate 64, U.S. 60 and W.Va. 25 - were closed for several hours.
"It was bad, but it could have been worse," said Mike Dorsey, chief of homeland security and emergency management for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
Dorsey noted that the Institute plant is best known by the public for its production and use of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, the chemical that killed thousands of people in a leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
Plant officials were quick to say that their MIC production unit and the largest storage area is on the other side of the plant - perhaps one-half mile away - from the site of Thursday's explosion. However, Bayer spokesman Tom Dover also confirmed that smaller MIC storage tanks, used to feed various pesticide production units, are located much closer to the explosion site.
Plant manager Nick Crosby said the explosion is believed to have occurred in or around a new, 4,000-gallon tank in what Bayer calls the plant's West Carbamoylation Center, in the southwestern corner of the facility.
Bayer makes the pesticide methomyl in the unit, but the company does not market it as a product. Instead, Bayer uses methomyl to make Larvin, its brand name of the insecticide thiodicarb. It is used to kill pests, particularly worms, on cotton, corn and a variety of other vegetables.
Larvin is a carbamate insecticide, a class of chemicals made from carbamic acid. Like organophosphate pesticides, these chemicals interfere with the conduction signals of the nervous system of insects, and in cases of poisoning with high levels of exposure, humans.
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