5 missing after blast at power facility
Source: Agencies |
February 9, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ABOUT five people remain unaccounted for after a deadly explosion at an under-construction power plant, and a section of the site was too unstable to search, a US fire official said yesterday.
Sunday morning's blast at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, about 30 kilometers south of Hartford, killed at least five people and injured a dozen or more others. It happened as workers were clearing gas lines of air.
Middletown Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said officials have verified the whereabouts of 95 percent of the nearly 100 workers who were at the plant.
Investigators returned to the scene yesterday to try to begin determining the cause.
Santostefano said he didn't know when rescue crews would be able to search the small section of the plant that is unstable.
Residents afraid
Piles of rubble were 3 meters tall in some parts of the plant, and mounds of rubble and debris were everywhere, he said.
The explosion was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away.
The blast left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides.
A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two big smokestacks were still standing at the site on a wooded and hilly parcel of land.
The US Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was mobilizing a team of workers from Colorado and hoped to have them on the scene yesterday, spokesman Daniel Horowitz said.
Sunday morning's blast at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, about 30 kilometers south of Hartford, killed at least five people and injured a dozen or more others. It happened as workers were clearing gas lines of air.
Middletown Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said officials have verified the whereabouts of 95 percent of the nearly 100 workers who were at the plant.
Investigators returned to the scene yesterday to try to begin determining the cause.
Santostefano said he didn't know when rescue crews would be able to search the small section of the plant that is unstable.
Residents afraid
Piles of rubble were 3 meters tall in some parts of the plant, and mounds of rubble and debris were everywhere, he said.
The explosion was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away.
The blast left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides.
A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two big smokestacks were still standing at the site on a wooded and hilly parcel of land.
The US Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was mobilizing a team of workers from Colorado and hoped to have them on the scene yesterday, spokesman Daniel Horowitz said.
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