Flash fire shoots flames 40 feet high: 1 killed, 1 injured
September 14, 2010 by Fred HosierPosted in: Fatality, fire/explosion, In this week's e-newsletter, Injuries, Investigations, Latest News & Views, OSHA news
PDF OSHA is investigating just what caused a flash fire that killed one worker and injured another at a manufacturer of wood molding and doors in Kansas.
Kevin Lewis was standing on a platform about 12 feet above ground at Woodwork Manufacturing in Hutchinson, KS. Investigators believe he was preparing to either clean a sawdust collector or dump sawdust from it, when a sudden burst of flames rose about 40 feet into the air.
Lewis either fell from the platform or jumped to try to escape the flames.
He was flown to a hospital burn unit where he died while receiving treatment. He was burned on well over half of his body.
The second worker, Randy Cummins, suffered burns to his hands from trying to help Lewis. He’s hospitalized in fair condition.
A local fire department spokesman says the highly combustible sawdust in the collector had everything it needed on a warm, humid day to burst into flames except oxygen. When Lewis opened the collector, the rush of oxygen could have been the last ingredient needed for the fire.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze.
Click here for OSHA’s web page on combustible dust.
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Tags: combustible, dust fire, OSHA investigating, sawdust
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September 16th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Everything it needed to burst into flames? What was the ignition souurce?
September 16th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Sometimes you don’t need an ignition source if conditions are right. I’ve seen manure piles start smoldering and flames on one right after a very light rain at a dairy yard. The farmer had been using a small front end loader to scrape the ground in some of his feeding pens and had numerous piles of the decayed hay and manure mix waiting on the truck that was supposed to haul it off. While waiting on this truck a light rain raised the moisture content enough to accelerate the decay process which produces heat, in this case quite a bit of heat. Man, that smelled really bad!
My mom once lived near some coal yards as a girl and told me that she would see them regularly wetting the coal piles to prevent spontaneous combustion. They had guys that would regularly walk the yard checking the moisture content of each pile/stack of coal before processing. I’m not sure what process would cause coal to heat up to the point of combustion but it was something that was taken very seriously 60+ years ago.
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:43 am
I have seen this type of sawdust fire in collection systems in the furniture industry. We were fortunate that no one was ever injured but unfortunatelty averaged 2-3 fires per year, before the plant was closed.
As a volunteer firefighter, I have responded to several fire calls at saw mills where the sawdust piles outside had caught fire. These saw dust piles generate a lot of heat and ad a brief summer rain and you have the right conditions.
Bales and rolls of hay will do the same thing. We have fought several fires in hay storage barns over the past few years as people have built hay barns with government assistance funds the frequency of this type of fire is increasing. These farmers have been storing rolls of hay in the field for years, which had little to no risk for nearby structures, and we are trying to educate them on how to prevent the barn fires.