Description
On April 2, 2019, homes shook around the KMCO, LLC facility in Crosby, TX when a piece of equipment broke off falling into the batch reactor’s liquid isobutylene supply piping. This caused a release of highly flammable vapor which suddenly exploded killing one operator, severely burning two others and injuring 28 contractors and employees in the facility. There was significant property damage from the explosion and subsequent fires and the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidating the company in July 2020.
Most businesses do not deal with workplace conditions that could result in such devastating effects from storing and working with flammable materials. Sometimes this is from knowledge and experience with the hazard and sometimes it is from dumb luck. In the Technical Paper on Reactive chemicals there is a description of a flammable solvent that had reacted with air creating a few shock-sensitive crystals that could have exploded creating a fireball with the liquid in the container and spread to the other flammables in the storage cabinet. It was luck that I happened to be in the area and decided to inspect the school district that summer.
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