THE HINDU
: CITIES / MADURAI : TWO KILLED AS CRACKER UNIT CATCHES FIRE NEAR
SIVAKASI, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/article1769379.ece
Two
persons were killed and five others injured today when a fire broke out
in a fireworks factory at Nathikudi near here, police
said.
Police said the fire broke out due to friction when
two workers were carrying =91mixed-chemical=92 substances from the
factory=92s godown to the manufacturing sheds.
Five
other workers were seriously injured in the fire, which was extinguished
by fire personnel, and have been admitted to hospital.
Sivakasi
is famous for its cracker manufacturing units.
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Operators
of one of the Port of Tacoma's larger container terminals have notified
truckers that the terminal is shut down indefinitely today while
environmental workers clean up an early morning chemical
spill.
The leaking container contains a chemical
called
chlorobenzotrifluoride.
According to the Tacoma Fire Department, the chemical is a solvent used
in the printing industry.
The chemical leaked in two different spots, one on the
dock at 1815 Port of Tacoma Road, and the other on the ship's
hull.
Firefighters were called to the pier shortly before 4
a.m. to investigate the spill where the Hyundai Oakland container ship
was unloading.
Chlorobenzotrifluoride is highly flammable and can
irritate skin, eyes and the respiratory system.
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COLORADO
SPRINGS, COLO. -- Colorado Springs police are investigating a homemade
chemical bomb explosion at a Colorado Springs apartment
complex.
It happened around 11 p.m. Monday night at Stonebrook
Apartments, located in the 4000 block of Tappan Drive.
Officers
originally responded to a report of shots fired at the
location.
At the scene, officers found the exploded homemade
bomb.
Authorities say the bomb was made from a soft drink
bottle, chemicals and aluminum foil.
Fire officials were able to
diffuse the bomb with a neutralizing agent.
Authorities said no injuries were reported, and no suspects
had been identified.
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TOWN OF WILSON, Wis. -- Four
firefighters were injured in a fire in a chemical lab in Sheboygan
County, according to the Sheboygan County Sheriff's
Department.
Smoke was reported from Lab
1 at Aldrich Chemical, 5485 County Highway V, in the Town of Wilson. The
plant is between Sheboygan and Cedar Grove, just west of Interstate
43.
The Town of Wilson Fire Department was initially
dispatched to the scene. Mutual aid from Oostburg, Cedar Grove,
Sheboygan Falls and city of Sheboygan Fire Departments was
requested.
Lt. Mark Rupnik of the
Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department said the fire was under control
about 90 minutes after the initial call.
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SANTA
ROSA -- An explosion at the Agilent Technologies facility in Santa Rosa
this morning left three people injured and prompted about 100 employees
to evacuate the building, a company spokesman said.
The explosion happened about 10:30 a.m. in Building
One at the facility, located at 1400 Fountaingrove Parkway. It occurred
in a ground-floor laboratory, in an area where integrated circuits are
made using molecular beam epitaxy, said Jeff Weber, spokesman for Santa
Clara-based Agilent.
The
explosion injured two employees, a man who was taken to Santa Rosa
Memorial Hospital with critical injuries and a woman with minor injuries
who was later taken by private car to Kaiser Hospital, Weber
said.
The man was cleaning a
machine when there was a chemical flash, Weber said. He said cleaning
the machine generally involves wearing a protective body suit, but he
did not know whether the man was wearing one Tuesday
morning.
The woman, a contract
employee from Volt, was injured when something fell and hit her on the
head outside the laboratory, he said.
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Four UC Merced custodians
were taken to Mercy Medical Center Monday night after a chemical spill
in one of the buildings at the university, officials
said.
The spill happened at the
penthouse of the science and engineering building, which is the floor
right above the third-floor and houses mechanical machines that help
operate the building, said Kevin Creed, director of environmental health
and safety. The spill leaked to a lab on the
third-floor.
The spill involved anywhere
from 10 to 15 gallons of water treatment chemicals used in industrial
and large buildings to prevent mineral build-up in pipes, Creed said.
The chemicals aren=92t flammable and are similar to strong
bleach.
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KANPUR:
Property worth lakhs of rupees was reduced to ashes in a fire that broke
out on Sunday night in an ink factory in Dada Nagar Industrial area.
There were no casualties. Firemen had to face hardships in dousing the
flames as explosions took place in the chemicals stocked in the
factory.
Around
six fire tenders from various fire stations were rushed to the site. The
fire may have been caused by a short-circuit, sources said.
The main
shed and other adjoining structures and fixtures and the machinery
turned into smouldering rubble, with the concrete building also
developing cracks at several places.
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DAYTON, Ohio -- Hazmat crews
spent hours on Monday afternoon trying to stop a spill from flowing into
the Great Miami River.
A fuel
storage tank broke, leaking gallons of some type of liquid in a
neighborhood and down a drain.
Fire
officials said they are not sure what was in the tank. However, the rain
helped the mix move a lot quicker toward the river, but the water
diluted it at the same time, authorities said.
Jamy Parworth called firefighters as soon as she
smelled it.
"It was just a chemical
smell Initially, then it started smelling like gasoline," Parworth
said.
She soon discovered where
the smell was coming from.
"Just a
big black pool just starting gushing out of the tank," she
said.
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(MARTINSBURG, NE) An ammonia leak leads to the
evacuation of a small Nebraska town.
Firefighters responded to
the scene in Martinsburg just after 8:00 Monday morning, when a farmer's
tank came loose from his tractor hitch and tore a line causing the
chemical leak. Officials quickly evacuated the town of about 100
residents and called in a HAZMAT team to verify that the leak had been
contained.
A few people were taken to Mercy Medical Center for
evaluation. Emergency managers and citizens both said the situation was
handled in the best and fastest possible way.
"The wind
actually came into favor to us today, luckily the wind was not that
high, it was only around one to three miles an hour today, so the cloud
actually stayed put and it did not come into town, it just stayed on the
gravel road and the field area," says Dixon County Emergency Manager
Shea Scollard.
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The past
24 hours has seen a downright disturbing series of explosions and fires
in factories, plants, and mines across China:
A fire in a four-story clothing factory in Beijing
early this morning killed 17 and injured at least 24 in yet another
tragedy caused by illegal construction practices. Those killed were all
migrant workers.
Rescue
workers are scrambling to reach eight miners trapped underground after
an explosion rocked their facility in Guizhou this
morning.
An explosion in a pesticide
plant in Guangxi caused three known injuries. Fires engulfed 3,000
meters and two warehouses. Two harmful chemicals have been confirmed on
site, and authorities have cordoned off the factory awaiting further
tests.
Another two people were
killed when an oil tank exploded in a factory in Wenzhou, Zhejiang.
Welding and oil do not mix.
Investigations are now underway to determine the cause of an
explosion that killed nine in a chemical plant in Heilongjiang province
last Wednesday.
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Ann Arbor=97 Officials at an Ann Arbor hospital have
declared an end to a hazmat situation that developed when a patient
swallowed rodent poison, leaving authorities to fear he would emit
harmful gases.
Officials at St. Joseph
Mercy Hospital today isolated the patient to one room, where Washtenaw
County hazmat teams monitored air quality. As of 4:50 p.m., hazmat teams
had left the hospital and officials said gas readings were within safe
levels.
Hospital spokeswoman Lauren
Jones said a machine would take environmental samples over the following
24 hours.
"The levels are not at
explosive or flammable levels," Jones said in a statement earlier in the
afternoon. "The air has been tested and confirmed for low
levels."
Hospital units remained open
to the public, other than the specific unit where the patient was being
treated, officials said.
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