Formosa report blames owners for plant failure and explosion

A federal investigation has concluded that an explosion at the Illiopolis Formosa Plastics plant that killed five workers almost three years ago, might have been prevented if the facility's owners had strengthened safety protections. The explosion happened April 23, 2004, when a Formosa worker who had been pressure-washing the inside of an empty reactor - a large vessel where liquid chemicals are mixed to form solid materials that are then dried elsewhere in the plant - went to the lower level to open a valve and drain it. However, he went to the wrong reactor, which was in the process of making polyvinyl chloride, and overrode a safety interlock device. This caused the highly volatile PVC inside to pour out of the bottom and, within minutes, find an ignition source and explode. The employee's error could have been prevented if Formosa and its predecessor, Borden Chemical, had taken precautions earlier, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigations Board said in a report after more than two years of study. The chemical safety panel said Borden Chemical, which owned the plant before its sale to Formosa in 2002, recognized in 1992 that changes to the valve interlock bypass were needed but did nothing about it. A second Borden study in 1999 also recognized there could be severe consequences if the valve was opened at the wrong time, but company officials again decided existing precautions were good enough. In 2003, the plant's new owner, Formosa, reported a similar incident at its facility in Baton Rouge. Although the company made safety changes at Baton Rouge, officials decided none were needed in Illiopolis because valve controls were different. Interestingly, in February 2004, an operator at the Illiopolis plant bypassed a bottom valve safety interlock, releasing a significant amount of vinyl chloride. Even then, the company did not act quickly enough and the fatal explosion occurred just two months later. Among other problems, the board said: * Not only was it too easy to override the safety valve interlock, but the reactors themselves were not clearly distinguishable from one another, other than by numbers on the sides. * There was nothing on the bottom level of the plant to indicate whether reactors were in operation or not. * There was no way for people on the bottom level of the plant to communicate with people at the top. * Neither Formosa nor Borden had held a mass evacuation drill or conducted training for such an incident for at least 10 years. The chemical safety board said the employees had time to get out of the plant, but instead they tried to stop the leak.