The Georgia Imperial Sugar Disaster 2008 | Plainly Difficult Short Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
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"On February 7 2008, The Imperial Sugar Refinery in Georgia, over run with sugar dust, would catch on fire..."
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:58 The Refinery
04:30 The Disaster
07:13 Investigation
09:37 Aftermath
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Sources:
►www.csb.gov/assets/1/20/imper...
►www.safetynewsalert.com/no-cri...
#disaster #Documentary #History #TrueStories
Any more explosions you'd like me to cover let me know Below!
Texas City Disaster would be a good one
There was a boiler explosion at a sugar beet factory in Shropshire in 2003. Boilers are pretty dangerous if not maintained correctly!
There was the Vostok-2M in 1980 and there was a couple of the Longmarch rockets the marched into some random directions
Pike river mine explosion pretty please with a cherry on top!
Webb's Bait Farm in Tennessee. Illegal Fireworks for the 4th of July
Another classic case of “if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident.”
Sadly, the factory owner has undoubtedly profited from the lack of safety and will continue to do as little as possible to maintain the rebuilt facility.
Even with the large number of safety violations discovered by OSHA, the fines issue in no way will deter a repeat performance. The risk of criminal charges is all but non-existent.
Love the quote. I think that was Trevor Kletz, right?
I've mentioned one before I heard a lot from people in the Navy, "These rules were written with blood."
Yeah, they may seem stupid, redundant, and unnecessary. But at some point someone didn't do it right and got themselves or others killed.
Why, accidents is something that happens to unlucky losers. And we're too cool to be losers.
...And he? He was a poser, a pretender - a loser pretending to be one of our cool bunch. Him having an accident proves that.
I would love to see the amount of money lost to down time of the factory being destroyed vs having employees cleaning here and there.
I've worked in factories and no matter how much you document, workers take the easy path. Managers only care about cleanliness when there is a tour. Safety is secondary to production.
Sadly it was the same years ago when I Used to work in a Bakery
the common factor in all of these videos is negligence, either management, maintenance or operator. i cant remember a single catastrophe that was inevitable. maybe the one where the train machinist had a heart attack while he was operating the locomotive and thats all
I literally experience this at our factory once a week. Huge drive on cleaning whenever theres a client walk around, yet when the pressure is on its totally fine to have bad housekeeping.
Its amazing how often people will choose the path of least resistance until it becomes the ultimate resistance another human phenomenon. We are a weird species when you step back and take a look 😊😊😊
Not only factories. I've worked in hospital laboratories, and it's the exact same mentality. The biggest accreditation org that does inspections, gives you a warning they are coming, outside that brief window though? Shits a mess.
PD, I have to tell you something. Since I started watching your videos a couple years ago, it has opened my eyes to safety issues at work. After there was an incident at the place that I work at that almost killed someone, I stepped up and volunteered to be the OSHA compliance officer. Thankfully, everyone takes what I say seriously and listens to our new safety regulations. I literally wrote the book for my company on our safety rules and regulations. Keep the awesome videos coming man.
Excellent Robert 😃!
Good on you! More people need to take safety seriously like this.
Thank you that's great!
@@yedoom Okay Karen.
@@jamesbond1231 Getting strangled by your own shirt because it got caught in the drill bit on a drill press is not a fun way to die.
www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ma/99ma033.html
Anyone who's worked in food processing has had similar problems, sadly. You will get a million stories. I worked in a berry processing plant one year and due to production quotas we overloaded the conveyors constantly with berries and the conveyor engines ran red hot. The room was technically "chilled" but the heat that radiated from the overburdened machines was palpable.Breakdowns were common, mechanical safeties would trip every 20-40 minutes and be instantly overruled.
Same experience when I worked in a medium scale bakery
Anyone with any manufacturing experience has had similar experiences. I used to work at a metal reclamation facility and thing that sticks to me most was when we almost had a furnace breach because the GM insisted that we stick to the schedule regardless of what the operators and supervisors found
There was a similar disaster in a town of Lubon, south of Poznan where I live: in 1972 there was a dust explosion in a potato products factory, which killed 17 people and injured ten, and the dextrin processing building was leveled. It also destroyed several railroad cars parked nearby.
The cause was never revealed by the communist authorities, but based on the workers testimonies, all the machines were in a desperate need of overhaul, and some of the safety measures, such as magnets which could catch loose bolts from the conveyor belts, were not installed because they would have to be imported from the West, and the production would have to stop for the time of their installation.
Therefore the most likely cause was a bolt falling into the processing machine, causing a spark which ignited loose dextrin dust hanging in the air.
Grandfather had a story of how CSR Sugar during WWII cut corners in cane growing areas in Australia. Some people will sacrifice safety for money.
ah, so this is why berries often feel... "floppy"? Right?
Living on the Great Plains in the US, I can recall hearing of several grain elevator explosions while I was growing up, so when I read the title, I was like "Whoa! sugar is way more flammable than grain, this is gonna be bad!" Yeah, it was. The really shocking thing was that it occurred in 2008, not 50 - 100 years ago.
Its scary to think it can happen within living memory
I live in the cotton part of the great plains, cotton gins catch fire and explode all the time. One just happened not too far from where I live in 2020, but I think it was a gas explosion.
😱 - I thought your fear would be living in tornado ally ⚠️, 🇺🇸
They're about the same in flammability. Grains are carbohydrates, which are just chains of sugar molecules glued to each other. So they have roughly the same energy content. (Wood is even longer chains of sugar, which is why it burns so well.)
True
Sugar plant fires are extremely dangerous not because of the sugar powder dust, but the molten sugar that when in a molten state behaves like lava and sticks to everything and will hold scolding heat for a long time.
That is pretty grim!
It is a horrible substance. The burn injuries from sugar are some of the worst you will see.
Nature's own napalm?
@@mbilden Indeed. One of the only visible scars I have (and more painful than the one I got from a table saw) was as a result of splashing sugar syrup.
Powdered sugar (icing sugar) also contains cornstarch which is highly flammable.
I have worked in this facility many times. They definitely keep it cleaner even more than a decade after the incident. They have a memorial to those were lost just inside the facility. Everytime I went, there were always flowers on the plaques.
Oh my god, I remember this! I was a sophomore in high school and lived less than half an hour from here. I distinctly remember feeling the entire house shake and rumble, my mom thought it was an earthquake. Everyone at school was talking about it the next day; I remember my boyfriend (husband now) was panicked because his dad was a trucker who often worked around the sugar refinery and he hadn’t heard from him since before the accident. Thankfully he was alright. A few weeks after that a local motorcycle club had a massive 100+ bike fundraiser thing for the families. It’s so wild to see something I can clearly remember on a channel like this.
I was in college at the time and remember it shaking our dorm, we were worried the big plate glass window in the living room was going to break.
I live in Port Wentworth and was Pre-K aged during this and went to the local elementary. I don’t remember hearing the explosion but I remember everyone panicking and the school being used to organize and sort people.
You seen the CSB video about the incident
@@railfandepotproductions I haven’t, could you share a link?
@@toribug1899 mkay
My employer actually uses this disaster as an example of the dangers of grains explosions. Surprisingly, they actually keep their grains areas cleaned and well maintained.
Or, perhaps, unsurprisingly. Rebuilding a facility is *expensive* af.
@@LeCharles07 While that is blatantly obvious, not everyone seems to get that. This is the first of three industrial workplaces that dealt with flammable dust on a daily basis that I have worked at, which properly maintains the ambient dust levels.
I have worked in factories that have varied between a total mess and one that I was the Quality Manager for, the floor, packing areas etc were damn spotless - we dealt with milk powder, 2 massive spray dryers running 24/7/365 you have to clean as you go because there isn't the down time for a pull apart clean more than once a year. I would photograph any rubbish I found on the floor of the sprayer building or the packing area, from bits of paper of scrap from maintenance to piles or dusting of powder suggesting a leak etc and I did this every week randomly and would chew out the staff who left anything behind. We had a info session on powder fires from other milk powder factories including near misses and after that my guys upped their game by 1000%. They knew that I wasn't someone who liked kicking peoples asses unless it involved their safety or the safety of our product and that at the end of he day, I wanted them all to get home safely.
Wish they had someone like you ! I worked as a conveyer belt lowest level employee at a food processing factory and the encouraged safety negligence to increase production speed was eye opening to me. I quit a month later because of my bad back and overall the constant noise and insane pressure to do the jobs of 3 people at once. That kind of pressure damaged my mental health and i didn't feel safe going to work on 4 hours of sleep when i was already told to neglect my safety. Thank you for your hard work - it really does save lives 🌸
This.
For safety culture to work, it has to start at the top but must be supported at all levels. Well done!
This is proper management. Thank you.
@N Fels I was 23 and worked for a dairy company making butter etc when I had to stop a shipment of butter because of high micro counts. It was a weekend and they needed 30 pallets of product to fill the shipment but the results were not up to scratch so I put it on hold and retested which would take 2 days.... this is in the 80s. I was one of 4 females in a factory of over 100 and just 23. The production manager came to see me and ordered me to remove the hold stickers and release the product. I said no. We argued. I told him that it was my decision and if he didn't get out of my lab I'd be on the phone to the union for harassment. I then had a parade of various people trying to change my mind saying that it wasn't that far out of spec and so on. I went and got bright fluro orange tape and wrapped it around each of the pallets with signs saying QUARANTINE.
I then got a call from the Plant Manager asking what was going on. I explained and said " You do realise that we, the Quality Department are your insurance policy and it's our job to be the last word in keeping this factory open and working. "
He gave me every support, came down and chewed out the men in their 40s trying to browbeat someone who was protecting them and their jobs and ask them how come they were so up my butt instead of figuring out why that days production was so buggy.
I was lucky to have both him and my actual boss who was on holiday at the time to back me up. Plus I can be a pig headed person when someone tries to get me to do something wrong.
I think also being in Australia, we have a strong safety ethic especially in the last few decades and WorkSafe, our compensation system and the fact that under our food laws if I knowingly allow product to be released that is non-compliant and someone gets hurt or dies, the company is liable for a 5 million dollar fine per instance and the managers, quality staff etc who signed off on it get a 2 million dollar personal fine plus 5 years jail has something to do with it. Well that was the law according to the Food Act when I last worked in the area!
You're an example to us all.
I used to work at a metal reclaimation plant. One of the hardest thing to make new people to understand is the importance of dust safety
The old sprinkle some flour into a campfire trick doesn't do it? Big whooshing fireball?
Our dust was metal heavy so a lot of it had to be dispersed very widely to be flammable. I used a tubular fan and a blow torch for the practical demonstration
Really, it's that difficult?
My high school chemistry teacher once just slammed down a cylinder container of powdered sugar with a lighter next to it.
The flame wasn't even a foot high, but since I didn't know/believe yet that anything can burn as long as it's sufficiently powdered, it left a deep impression on me!
Seeing what a tiny puff of sugar can do, and then thinking about what the consequences would be if that got scaled up to the entire work floor, would make me very compliant with any anti-dusk regulations 😂👍🏼
like earlier stated, our dust was metal heavy. It needed to be widely dispersed provide adequate oxygen for ignition. I used to work in a metal reclamation facility, compressed air and high energy heat sources was part of the processes and most people do not get how metal dust could cause an explosion. The tubular fan and blowtorch may seem excessive but they were a good simulation of what could happen if proper dust safety was not observed
@@acidblue8111 Wait, isn't metal powder an ingredient in Tannerite?
...and thermite come to think of it. Is metal fires a bigger risk or metal dust explosions?
Dixie Crystal sugar. I remember having to explain to a customer of the grocery store I worked at at the time that we don't have that brand of sugar due to the explosion that killed more than a dozen people.
Most people would assume you were joking.
@@scowler7200 The main reason for the explanation was they thought we weren't ordering it or it was somehow the stores fault for not having it. I was hoping that by explaining they would know it's going to be awhile before we see it!
When I studied barn safety and management for horses, the one thing they drilled into us was that dust was the number 1 danger in a barn, not only for the fire hazard, but for what it does to your lungs
same thing in a pottery studio. certain material particles on ceramics can cause small blow outs in the kiln ruining the piece or at worst the whole load, but also that dust is also horrendous to your lungs. Never sweep, always mop.
I've spent many years in horse barns. Thorough stall cleaning, every "apple" prevents fecal dust. Not many stables realize the dust issue is a fire & health issue for people and horses!
Workers in textile factories had an equivalent of black lung where lint would fill their lungs over the years/decades
Yup, I wonder how the solubility of sugar would affect people health wise, would it be better or worse than normal, non soluble dust? I'm not a doctor but having lungs full of dissolved sugar sounds like a bacterial/fungal type infection waiting to happen. I wonder if it could affect blood sugar as well, the various veins of the lungs are thin to allow oxygen/CO2 transfer, so I wonder if the sugar dust could theoretically make that jump as well. Probably not but idk
@@sarahamira5732 Sounds like the perfect research project for someone wanting to get their doctorate.
How in the 21st century can a facility this big have such a medieval attitude towards dust build-up? That this factory was operating with so little regard to safety and the lack of proper extraction and prevention involved is mindblowing.
Pretty scary
Because 'Merica.
america, fuck yeah
"Huh? Keep the nanny state (Federal guidelines about safety) out of our plant! Freedom! 'Murica!" Until we can re-educate (un-brainwash) the red half of the country, this is only going to get worse.
@@smorris12 Yeah everytime i see american be like fuck OSHA and blablabla, i facepalm so hard. What a weird patch of land.
I'll always remember the power in a dust explosion - when I was young, I went on a field trip where they had a demonstration, a small clear box they filled with a small amount of dust and then touched off a spark. I think it was the loudest bang I've ever heard, certainly the most unexpected.
interesting
Companies which have to cope with dust buildup need to do this demonstration every year during the company picnic. So every worker and manager knows just how dangerous dust is, and is on board about preventing its buildup.
It's scary how some of the disasters described here are so similar that when I'm watching, sometimes I think to myself "Wait haven't I seen this episode already?"
Sadly too much the familiar
Watching PD, Fascinating Horror, and the USCSB TH-cam channel has taught me that there are 2 or three causes of industrial accidents and they are corner cutting to save money, not following procedure to save time or money, and failure to adequately train workers in safety protocols. I might be missing some but, for the most part, 99% of industrial accidents can usually be attributed to one of those three things.
@@PlainlyDifficult Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. And your videos really help people learn history.
@@LeCharles07 Communication failures are a smaller but still significant cause. Some of those can only happen because they aren't following procedures on things like lockouts or actually documenting or labelling things, though.
@@Br3ttM Yeah, I was watching a documentary on Piper Alpha just the other day and I can't help but feel like 167 people could still be alive if someone left several well visible notes on the pipeline control panel that said "Safety valve is REMOVED, do NOT turn the pump on under any circumstances".
I worked in many wood mill as a welder contractor. many mill are easy to get lost in. and most of them will clean but all the hidden corner and hard to access area are always full of dust and debris.
we always had to soak everything when welding an stick around for many hours after the fact. and often we had to clean stuff before we can actually start work.
Thanks for sharing
I was a security officer that worked fire watch in a saw mill after hours. There was saw dust all over beams, in between partial floors, and on top of light fixtures that were on 24 hours a day. There were two incidents while I was on duty, a smolder between floors, and a smolder on top of a light fixture. Luckily easy enough to put out, but it could have been so much worse.
I spent a summer in college as a welder's assistant/fire watch on a construction crew that was building an expansion to a paper mill. The part of the job that involved putting in pipelines and such in the oldest part of the existing mill was... exciting, in that "everything in here might explode and kill us all at any moment" kind of way.
@@ZGryphon I worked for a while in a woodworking shop. I took it upon myself, as the most junior, to keep the floors and machines clean and free from sawdust. It surprised me how lax my elders were about it, given how slippy sawdusty floors are, and how previous to my working the large table circular saw had kept overheating and cutting out because they didn't clean the sawdust out of the back hopper. When I was there, it didn't cut out, because it wasn't bunged up. These days there would be extractors on all the machines here in the UK, a much better solution than me with a shovel and a bucket.
3:37 I was confused for a moment when instead of a bag of sugar, I saw a grey box that says 1280 x 720, hehe.
Excellent video!
The fact that the CEO was there is pretty wild.
I worked in a Milk Powder factory in the 1980s and 90s in New Zealand, safety was drilled into us from day 1, we were shown safety videos showing the dangers of dust explosions and there was a worker whose only job was to vacuum all the floors and clean up any spillage and also keep surfaces clean. Having a single worker whose job it was to keep dust suppressed seems a lot cheaper than 15 deaths.
but laws protect them here so no problem ,no punition was given got the insurance claim and the new factory that come with it all win for the compagny ...The United States Department of Labor requested that Ed Tarver, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, pursue criminal prosecution against Imperial and its executives. OSHA cited Imperial with 124 safety violations, finding that the company acted with "plain indifference to, or intentional disregard for, employee safety and health".[3] Tarver said there was not enough evidence of intentional disregard or plain indifference to bring criminal charges against Imperial. He also cited a lack of federal criminal laws specifically related to safety in the sugar industry as a reason for his decision.[3]
that's not how business thinks. Did the place blow up? No? never mind, get the F back to work evahbody.
@@STScott-qo4pw Maybe it doesn't work in America where the workers are scared to say no to working overtime, or scared to not go into work if they are sick, or scared to take time off for their childs birth, or scared to take time off for holidays. I grew up in a country where the unions were strong, where if I was sick I would be sent home, after being told off for coming in. The only reason businesses think it is Ok not to have their workers have any rights is greed, pure and simple greed. If any business cannot afford to have their workers making a decent wage, in a safe working environment then they should be shut down. This from someone who lived in a country with strong worker laws, where their rights to have a safe working environment took precedent
I imagine that part of the reason the company got off without criminal charges was so that they could rebuild and keep the vital jobs in the area. Sadly, when the workers become dependent on centralized employment, they end up bearing not only the labor, but the risk as well.
It's because the people working in enforcement agencies are bureaucrats that are motivated by the same yes-man mentality as the factory staff. They do enough right to keep their jobs but not enough to draw too much attention to themselves. They dedicate all of their idealism to self-preservation. Nobody at OSHA is going to suffer from falling on their sword.
I'd say it would be easy to show there was negligence, but it could be hard to pin it on specific individuals.
Maybe it's the old sailor in me, but I always have a bit of the "Captain is always responsible" mentality. CEO is always to blame, if nothing else for not creating a culture of safety @@Br3ttM
@@JoshuaTootell It was an old site, I imagine most of the workers kept the old-timey mentality of "if it aint broke dont fix it" and various other complacency issues, in this case, the dust wasnt directly breaking anything, so why replace or pay a ton to fix/clean what they thought was not even a problem?
but laws protect them here so no problem ,no punition was given got the insurance claim and the new factory that come with it all win for the compagny ...The United States Department of Labor requested that Ed Tarver, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, pursue criminal prosecution against Imperial and its executives. OSHA cited Imperial with 124 safety violations, finding that the company acted with "plain indifference to, or intentional disregard for, employee safety and health".[3] Tarver said there was not enough evidence of intentional disregard or plain indifference to bring criminal charges against Imperial. He also cited a lack of federal criminal laws specifically related to safety in the sugar industry as a reason for his decision.[3]
Plainly, As a Savannah native and a local healthcare worker I was there to support the victims of the sugar refinery accident. The horror's witness after the accident were indescribable. I felt so bad for the victims with Scan Burns that would have created a 4th degree. Just a thing all this happened because Is a company valued a dollar over the safety of human beings. The horrors not only traumatized victims but staff alike. I have been watching your channel channel months now and want to thank you for covering this in my currently sunny yet always warm for this time of year of Savannah Ga.
My mom works for a company that develops and produces safety installations to prevent dust explosions in those industries prone to risk and frequently tells me about cases like these where the safety wasn't invested in and or completely neglected, so sad
Good video! As a side note; USCSB has an awesome channel with great videos on horrible industrial accidents.
Love there reenactments
There’s a CSB video on this event which is worth a watch, after you have watched this one, of course!
BEst animations evar
I'm so happy they are [finally] putting out videos again. USCSB has some of the most informative and insightful videos on industrial accidents on TH-cam.
I watch every CSB video.
The Chemical Safety Board has their own video on this incident as well. It's titled "Inferno: Dust Explosion at Imperial Sugar". I'm glad to see Plainly covering this incident, though! Dust explosions aren't something to be taken lightly. Even just a handful of fine powder can produce a fireball large enough to engulf a person in flames. The more this hazard becomes common knowledge, the better!
I used to work in a plant that made the wheels that go on US automobiles. My favorite thing to do was to sit in the Safety Manager's office and listen to his horror stories. Prob why I love this channel so much, keep up the great work PD!
Having lived in southeast Georgia for along time, I remember this event, it was terrifying yet completely unsurprising.
The whole region is dotted with these environmental disaster 'Superfund' sites, not all of which have been officially documented.
One had an Elementary School built right on top of it, only to be torn up five years later, turns out the school board kept that fact a secret
I just started the video but i refuse to believe sugar could hurt anyone, it's so sweet.
But sweet and turn bitter
I was just saying to John to watch That Sugar Film, if you'd like to learn about the damage sugar causes to this planet.
There's a reason why sugar is classed in the same addictice class as Cocaine & Heroine in fact, it's even more addictive than both of those but there's much to learn. We haven't even broke down the three types of sugar yet.
It's the dust particles it like saw dust particles both are highly explosive
Tell that to my pancreas
@@CompelledFungus you sound like you're fun at parties
This sounds pretty similar to the sugar bin explosion in Scottsbluff Nebraska in the late 90s I think. I've heard a few conflicting stories about what caused it. Some people said it was a bearing, some said it was a faulty light fixture and I've heard some people say it was someone smoking a cigarette. Either way, it was a sugar dust explosion and now they have the bins in a line instead of side by side in a square, and their office building was built on the foundation of the old bins so they are rounded off and everything
I was just coming to comment on this - I was living in Scottsbluff when it happened. Took months to clean up, more months to rebuild. I heard the blast in a walk-in cooler on the far side of town.
@@jerriecan I'm from the alliance area and its still a pretty big discussion around here. Do you know any of the details I'm a little fuzzy on by chance? I think it was in 96 cause my parents had said I was only a few months old when it happened
@@Alex.2014. July 20th, 1996. Never any great confirmation on what started the fire, a lot of finger pointing because no one was accepting blame.
The cause of dust explosion isn't ignition point. It's not collecting your dust.
@@mattlogue1300 thats the cause of the explosion in the video, however when sugar is pouring into a bin, or silo, as was the case in the Scottsbluff sugar bin explosion, you can't collect the dust as easily. Its the same as when grain is being poured into a bin and an explosion happens. No matter how much you try there will always be dust that cannot be caught and its an explosion danger. I've heard stories from several farmers of ventilated bin sites exploding from bearings or sparking wires.
Many people are quite surprise just how explosive sugardust is. And once again profit and greed over human life.
Sadly true
its the workers that got lazy and lazier with each passing day until something blew up tho. and thats why we have minimum wage
@@MrPaxio i dont think thats how that works fam
@@MrPaxio Usually, in situations like this, the maintenance is being skipped to save money and has jack shit to do with lazy workers. FYI, most of the workers on a site like this are typically union and make better than minimum wage.
Nicely done as usual 👍
Proving criminal intent isn't usually possible because even though the _carelessness_ is intentional, the _intent_ to kill others isn't.
Plus company policies were ignored by the facilities management team, probably because they were more concerned about their production bonuses being reduced by maintenance shutdowns.
That theme is common in manufacturing. Look at the Deep Water Horizon accident. Same thing. The investors didn't want maintenance shutdowns, they wanted that oil produced so they could get their bonuses.
"Follow the money" is usually the main reason behind most accidents like this.
Intentionally trying to harm others isn't.
Thank you
Deepwater Horizon was a drill platform, it wasn't producing oil (that's done by production platforms). The platform ops team were in the process of sealing off the current drill hole by filling it with "mud" (a carefully concocted slurry) when it blew out and the safety device on the seabed on the far end of the drill string, the "blowout preventer", failed to operate properly. There were a whole series of fuckups, small errors that added up due to the Swiss Cheese hole effect that led to the blowout happening but it wasn't pressure from management to produce oil that caused the disaster.
Sure, but that should only reduce the charges to manslaughter.
@@robertsneddon731 you can't produce oil until you have the hole drilled. This drill platform had reached the oil by the time the engines started sucking in natural gas, causing them to over-rev and explode.
I agree with you about that.
The guys that owned the drill rig wanted to move on to another location and didn't want to take the rig offline and spend necessary time performing needed maintenance.
I saw the movie and a documentary about it. I also worked in oil fields for 8 years AND experienced first hand what happens when the truck's engine started sucking in natural gas. We have emergency shut down valves that stop all air from going into the engine. You have to open the hood and reopen those valves with a wrench to be able to start the engine again.
According to the film, they didn't have that emergency cut off for those massive diesel engines.
The leak was a product of many, many other things going wrong, but the explosion was over revved diesel engines caused by escaping natural gas being sucked into the air intake causing a runaway effect.
Over bearing pressure by management to cut maintenance down time led to all the fk ups that led to the explosion that led to the leak.
See how things work?
@@LeCharles07 I'm no lawyer, but double jeopardy laws may prevent that, or the charges need to be reduced or refiled in order to get a criminal conviction.
Civil trials are far easier to win because they don't have to prove intent, among other things.
"They knew or _should have known!"_ is the cry of the civil litigation lawyer because it works. Prosecutors have to clear a higher bar.
As a chemist, the idea of combustible dust just floating around terrifies me. I can't imagine allowing combustible particulates to float around the lab and potentially contact heat sources. This kind of incident just goes to show that there were no professionals advising the big wigs. There really should be more rigorous vetting processes for businesses that handle potentially hazardous materials.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, unless it impacts production. My findings from a career in manufacturing.
Oh my gosh, i had an online best friend who's dad passed away in a sugar factory explosion. She was from Savanah, Georgia...
Thats saddening
I live in Savannah. I remember the night this happened. I was driving home from a rehearsal that evening and had to cross DeRenne Avenue at one point. Although authorities were allowing traffic to cross, they were not allowing people to drive on DeRenne. It’s a major east-west arterial roadway that connects to 516. There are also two hospitals facing DeRenne. The police shut it down so the only traffic going to and fro on that road was ambulances and fire trucks. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
The injuries from the explosion were gruesome. Several people were airlifted straight to the burn center in Augusta.
All the sugar in the silos became molten from the heat and burned and burned for days. There was no way for the fire department to extinguish it.
I’m pretty sure that refinery explosion will be Port Wentworth’s defining historical disaster forever. That community is still living with the trauma.
I live right down the road from the refinery. The way some of those people died is tragic. They had an army hospital set up across the street behind the elementary school flying people directly to the Augusta burn center in north Georgia.
John: I didn’t look to see if you’ve covered the Sayano-Shushenskaya power station accident, but if not it likely is a good choice. Having an entire hydro unit rise up out of the turbine pit on a geyser of water boggles the mind.
Ive covered it before here's the link th-cam.com/video/vWSleesle-E/w-d-xo.html
Some of the security camera footage was scary, and some was funny in a morbid way. It was definitely due to shoddy maintenance practices and poor operations decisions.
And the exact same thing happened at Dartmouth Dam, Victoria, Australia in 1990 - with no fatalities because the underground turbine hall was unoccupied at the time…
A hoist beam fell into the turbine intake. The turbine hall instantaneously filled with water and the pressure blew the lift (with the plant operator inside) to the top of the lift shaft.
I live 2 miles from Michigan Sugar. Worked there off and on from 2013 -2018 on beet piling grounds driving front end loaders and skytraks around. They have cleaning crews that work full time year round. Just to remove dust build-up.
Two things, first hand experience with dust explosions. First, I was about 12 or so, and a bit of a pyromaniac. Got into trouble a fair bit for starting fires. Anyway one day my friends and I were mucking round in a new construction site and I set fire to a pile of sawdust. Realised it was time to go home and tried to put it out by whacking it with a half sheet of plywood. Reallllly dumb idea. Having the plywood tight against my body prevented any damage above the waistline and shorts and socks gave protection to those areas. From just above the knees to ankles. 2nd and 3rd degree burns to the front of my legs. Took most of the summer to heal, oddly no scars. I figure that was because I ran and jumped into a stream and sat there for an hour til my brother came to get me and smuggled me into the house. My mum covered the burns with shaving cream and bandages. Go figure. Second, a few years later a bunch of us walked into the chemistry lab and were yapping away, paying no attention to the teacher. He was sitting there with a paint can on his desk and an evil grin. Once we were all seated, again yapping away, there was a god awful bang and the lid bounced off the ceiling. Candle in the can, tuna can full of flower. Hose poked into a hole in the side. Puff of air, BANG.
I work in the milling industry. I see safety films about dust explosions frequently. Even with dust filters and duct work, dust collects everywhere! I constantly have to clean! In general, many companies could be said to be lax in maintaining facilities. Grain and rice can be very abrasive, and can cut through steel. Insufficient staff, long hours, little time off, and fatigue don’t help matters any. Old electrical equipment can be a hazard too!
Youd think you would see such a thing in a large scale bakery, but no. Just switch the machines off and evacuate (preferably without hitting the emergency stop, yes that was told to me)
every surface of that factory looked fun and edible
Lickable
Hahahaha. Willy Wonkaesque.
Not fun- imagine going home covered in stick. Sugar dries skin out and is abrasive.
With such a fine powder, even if you are following safety and cleanliness protocols it's very hard to keep the fire hazard down.
My dad had a neighbor with a flour solo as a kid. It burned down one day, and the fire was so hot he said there was barely even any metal left
Yes dust is very very hard to control
I worked as an industrial machine and equipment technician for almost forty year's. I can tell you I've seen dozens of plant's and factories just like the one described here, School House Candy in Rhode Island being one of the worst. Much like industrial sugar they made hard candies using tons of powdered sugar. It was everywhere on every surface, you couldn't touch anything without getting covered in it. It was one of the places that when I got the call to go fix a forklift or hydraulic elevator I cringed, I was never so happy as when they shut down for good.
I wanna add to what another viewer said: watching your videos has made me far more safety conscious than ever before. I've heard friends joke around about safety issues at their work places, and ive made them aware just how seroous the issues were! Im on disability due to a back injury, so i cant interfere that much, but I see disasters before they happen. That's all thanks to you!!
Imperial Sugar: "I declare this sugar plant un-dust-explosion-able"
Fate: "kionky"
Personally I just watch these for the London weather reports.
Hey! I don't usually comment on your videos but since I'm early I just wanted to say, I love your stuff! It's great and I hope you keep making content :)))
Hey, thanks!
Thank you for another clear illustration of why profits are at odds with the well being of the people.
When I was working in construction I had the opportunity to help rebuild the domino sugar plant in Baltimore after it had exploded, 2005 or 2006 or so. Plant was 100 years old and had 10 inches of thick sugar crust on every surface imaginable. They suffered a big explosion but was late at night and luckily nobody was injured. It blew the glass out of cars a block away. That place was dark, noisy, and smelled horrible. Would have made a good Freddy Kruger film set.
I always feel awkward upvoting your stuff. Like, it's always great work-but it also feels vaguely terrible, like I'm upvoting the events themselves.
Thanks for the great content!
Most people in the know will say that flour dust (from wheat, barley, rye etc) explosions are the worst.
But I personally have stronger feelings about burning sugar. You see, for example, wheat doesn't melt. It burns or roasts into ash.
Sugar that's on fire on the other hand turns molten, like lava. Getting molten burning sugar on you must be like getting white phosphor on you. It just sits there eating away at your flesh and when you try and brush it off you it just sticks to more places and forms long lines of hot sugar that burns like a fuse in the air.
In short, i would much rather be concussed by a flour explosion than have sugar explode all around me and then raining down on me in flaming molten form.
I can vouch for the nastiness of hot sugar. One time I was making caramel and I splashed a tiny bit of it on my arm. I mean, it was barely a couple of droplets. The thing welded to my skin and proceeded to burn my arm, even after dousing it with cold water for ten minutes. I put a bag of ice on it just to try and draw the intense heat, which did the job, but the plastic ice bag melted onto the hot sugar in the process. Removing the bag was pretty painful as the now hardened sugar was welded to both the bag and my arm, which ended up tearing a bit of skin off my arm. This was a fair number of years ago and the scarring was pretty minimal, but you can still see the discoloured areas when I get a tan.
So yeah, being in a building full of molten sugar being propelled all over the place must be like one of the circles of hell
@@leopold7562 The fourth circle. The fifth circle would have to be frying oil.😫
@@amethyst5538 Urgh, don't even get me started on frying oil! Not only have I had many unpleasant burns from that stuff, I've ruined a fair few t-shirts with it too
My mom and I raced to our hospital to help after this tragedy. The entire er smelled like sugared pork. It was terrible. The survivors were tough, no one was screaming. Possibly shock but even two and three days later. Those workers never screamed or moaned in pain despite being horrifically burned on most of their bodies. I'll never forget the smell. I can't eat honey baked ham anymore. Luckily I wasn't done with my medical education yet so all I was doing was transport and runner. My mother was not as lucky and refuses to talk about her patients from the night other than to say she was proud of me that when the call came in, I immediately started to get dressed too. She didn't expect me to respond so readily and is really proud of me.
I cried watching this. I hadn't watched this information the following days. It was too much.
Dust is majorly explosive, indeed
Consider this blast was seen from the next state over, across the river....and was massive.
If you want nightmare fuel, look into the Westray mine and the attitudes towards dust and the disaster as s well too.
Really, there's so many industrial disasters that PD could keep the channel going forever
A new video! Sweet!
Tasty!
Oh man! I can't believe you did this vid, I saw I wasn't the only one to recommend this one but still.. Close to home, I was in middle school and friends of mine had parents working there. These days I work around the corner and do some work for this plant. Just feels cool to see this from my favorite disaster channel.
I worked in two metal finishing jobs. One had a rigorous cleanup policy of the grinding pit, and the other upgraded their air vents to a water-filtered air vent. I'm glad I was cared for
Haha! I'm here before the notification arrived!
Awesome thank you!
I was hired as bookkeeper/secretary in a cabinet shop, and gradually took on work on the factory floor. I operated a computerized router. The material to be cut was only held on the bench be suction. The bit spun, I think, 35,000 rpms. It did not stop for any reason until shut down. I was asked to train a couple other employees. As we got to safety, their utter disinterest was so clear that another ma n came from the other side of the building. He pointed out that if the work flew iff the bench, it would strike them is the last place they wanted to be hit. THAT got their attention.
You can't totally blame management for safety lapses.
Thank you for covering this small piece of history from my home city. Not many people know about it. I remember learning bout it in 5th grade, as I hadnt lived there when it happened. But thank you for sharing this tragic story.
i like the way you make your videos. i watch those CSB and NTSB investigation videos too but these here are just as enjoyable and informative. thank you.
I've been watching this channel for a long time now and it's very bizarre to see a video about my hometown that I can remember unfolding live basically. And knowing some of the people involved, both working there and first responders, makes it all the more strange.
Had a strong feeling of déjà vu... Then you mentioned the grain explosion. 😜
Dust explosions never changes
I was a youngin’ when this happened. 4th grade or so. Lived 45 minutes away. All i remember is the news and confusion. Glad to see a video about what happened from a reliable source. Keep up the great work!
Best sleep videos tbh. These mini documentaries are perfect for falling asleep to.
good work again john, i'd have it as a 4-5, it is crazy how powders can act in a fire, and the thought of burning melting sugar dripping on you as you struggle to get out,,, now thats nasty
Thank you! It is pretty grim!
Thank you for the weekly weather update!
My pleasure!
I 💕 your stories! Always fascinating and well put together! Thank you for your hard work 🙂
Excellent content as always , I had no idea that sugar could create an explosive dust that could cause something like this . Keep up the great work , your channel rocks !!
Not me binge watching these vids instead of studying.. well I guess I'm still learning! Thanks for making these explaining video's!
Glad you like them!
I love these videos - clear, to the point, thorough, and great narration.
Thank you kindly!
@SEGASammyTheWhale I want to get back into streaming - hopefully once I've resolved some minor technical problems, I can!
Always love your London weather reports, John. It's a common topic of banter with my English friends. Cheers from Oz.
At the time I lived and worked about 30 minutes away from Port Wentworth. I was in college and was working part time nights at the convenience store a mile from my house. We definitely felt the boom, and it was all we talked about for days afterwards. Crazy to see a TH-cam video about something that happened so close to home.
Hardened sugar needed to be get rid of... Every single moonshiner's wet dream.
Wild that, for once, the CEO was actually present for the incident. Surprised that didn't play any bigger role in the story afterward.
Someone brings that up
JOHN YOU ARE STILL AMONG MY FAVORITE MASTER TRUE TALE TELLERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! seen all of your episodes !
i worked aty a lumber mill in winnipeg. dust and sawdust EVERYWHERE. behind some of the saws it was as high as my knees. owner - to be competitive - had stopped the detailed cleaning needed. the dust collection silos that were in function would clog frequently and we'd have to dig them out - sometimes the wood wasn't completely dried and the sawdust had enough water in it to bind into a pulp-like glue.
every single time i hear of a situation like this it is almost always mgmt cutting some corner here or there to "improve productivity and increase efficiency".
My uncle was in the London Metropolitan police and attended an explosion in a custard powder factory. He saw people with crush injuries, skin blown off, real horror stories.
Horrible
Crush injuries? Overpressure?
@@scowler7200 falling plant and building collapse.
If they had spent the time and money to keep the dust under control and not put so much product on the ground, they probably could have afforded the time to keep the place clean.
Love your videos dude!
This provides a helpful contrast to things that happened in suspicious concurrence more recently.
cool. thanks john!
Welcome!
1:45 Are you certain about the diameter of the silos? I suspect that they are 40 foot, not 140 foot. In the pictures of the site they appear to be much taller than their width.
I was thinking the same thing that’s a massive silo
Additionally, the tunnel is 130ft long but each silo is 140ft diameter? The diameter has to be a mistake.
@@elizabethpashley3283 agreed. Math doesn't lie.
Perhaps by "diameter" they meant circumference?
@@kevinwatts8221 possibly. That works out to about 44-1/2 feet, which is in the ballpark.
I remember this on the news when this happened, although I was 12 at the time and was living in Midway ( A very Rural area in between Richmond Hill, Guyton, and a few other areas ) I remember my grandparents who were still with us at the time, talking about it, as well as my father. Now Im living in Savannah, and working as an over the road truck driver. Of course I didn't know in detail about it until this video, thanks for the info. Let's hope another incident doesn't occur.
I grew up an hour or so from Savannah, it was a big deal when this happened, I still remember that. People would buy their sugar that was still in the stores, to kinda help out in a small way. Especially since we didn't know until much later that it was caused by negligence.
When I first read "Plainly Difficult" and "sugar" I was expecting the Great Boston Molasses Flood.
It hasn't been covered yet, has it?
Still waiting for it.
Not yet but I should probably do it!
@@PlainlyDifficult you should! It’s starting to warm up here in New England. I’ve got friends who swear, swear you can smell it when it gets hot enough.
That's the next podcast with slides over at Well There's Your Problem Podcast ;-)
I work at a Tissue paper mill in Oregon. Paper dust isn't as explosive as other dusts, but it is grouped in the "ignitable dusts and fibers" group. I am sad to report that the company refuses to install dust collection after several costly dust fires over the past 2 decades. A handful of employees have received second degree burns to their bodies as well, though no fatalities yet. I believe at some point the mill will make it on Plainly Difficult.
Very disturbing- and surely the dust is a hazard to lung health as well- don't you have health and safety laws that would protect you? Is there nobody you can report it to who can do anything? In the UK unions will help by reporting it to the authorities, and the government's Health and Safety Executive an get involved (though our current right wing government is underfunding it, as they do).
Wonderfully explained as always
Thanks again!
I remember this. I grew up in Georgia and I remember sugar was very hard to get for about a year afterwards and was really expensive when it could be found at the grocery store. I was too young to know any details, other than that the refinery had exploded so this was interesting to hear.
Wait, is 3:38 supposed to have a picture? Or is that the joke?
A little bit out of column a and a little bit out of column B
Yes, I too keep a bag of 1280x720 in my kitchen. I recommend staying away from the store brand stuff though. I've discovered more than once that they accidentally filled it with 720x1080 instead.
@@PlainlyDifficult The actual best response possible
I saw a video of this disaster on the CSB TH-cam channel
Great source of disasters
The US Chemical Safety Board was formed by congress after the 1984 Bhopal Disaster.
They have investigated many incidents, which some of the biggest causes where flammable dust and out of control chemical reactions.
I could see my old house at the 9:50 mark
I lived in Port Wentworth for 4 years and many of my neighbors worked at the refinery before, during or after the incident. It was still very fresh in everyone's mind in 2015
Awesome I was hoping you would do this one
Hope you enjoyed it!
3:06 Part of the issue was they only hired identical twins, so couldn't always get skilled workers,
Love your videos, long time watcher.
Just wanted to say that there were a few gaps in your audio and the pacing of your lines was a little off.
I know you probably do all of this on your own, and you do a great job.
Please keep up the good work and spreading knowledge about these disasters.
Much of my job involves designing intrinsically-safe equipment for hazardous areas. Dust, vapor, and gas hazards are no joke (and the standards we have to design to reflect that).
Hi John thanks for your videos! You have one of the best disaster channels in the Internet. I don't think you've ever seen the movie called "That Sugar Film", it's a good watch, lemme know what you think.
Ill have to check it out! Thanks for the suggestion and your kind words!!
Thank you John, as my Grandad would tell me, Damien your kindness exceeds your personal generosity.
I used to work at a fire sprinkler design, install & maintenance company, so I was interested in that angle. Factories that produce combustible particulate, in this case sugar dust, need to have special systems. Called a deluge system, it's where all the sprinkler heads go off at the same time. (Normal sprinkler heads need to be set off individually and are completely independent of any other head. Sorry, but Hollywood lies.) I did some digging and unfortunately the initial explosion damaged the pipes that fed the sprinkler system. Really everything went wrong here.
Fully sprinklered occupancies can burn to the ground independent of the type of sprinkler system. If there is an excessive accumulation of combustible particulate on overhead members an initial explosion can cause particulate to become suspended dozens of feet from the original event which can then participate in secondary explosions. The area over which this can occur can be far greater than the design area of any sprinkler system-even if the sprinkler feed mains remain unscathed-the BoR demands will be too great. What every HPR inspector looks for is the control of dust accumulations either through manual efforts, fixed dust collection, or engineering-out the sources of particulate emissions.
Have them go off periodically to clear dust
I adore your London weather report at the end of each video. My part of Ohio has been in the 90s(F) all day and I am roasting. Your video provided a much needed distraction from the heat and humidity. I’m too warm to think effectively right now but will try to remember some explosions I would like to have you cover when it cools and I can think again.
Great video. Thanks for sharing it.
FYI -- you have a placeholder for the paperbag graphic early in the story.