January 06, 2004
Explosion Rocks Conway Plant, Area Evacuated
Explosions rocked a chemical plant in Conway Tuesday, shooting fireballs into the sky and forcing the evacuation of schools and businesses.
Police say two people suffered burns, one critically. All plant workers were accounted for. The cause of the explosions isn’t immediately known.
Fires were spread throughout the Detco Industries plant on the city’s south side and the smoke was so thick that meteorologists 30 miles away in Little Rock detected the plume on radar screens.
Flames climbed to 30 or 40 feet, but fireballs reached higher during a number of smaller explosions.
What was in the smoke wasn’t immediately known. The state Emergency Management Department said federal documents from 2002 show that the plant has hydrofluoric acid, sulfuric acid and methanol on the premises, though it did not know if those chemicals were involved in the fire.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality set up portable air-quality monitors in an effort to detect what was in the cloud.
Detco makes industrial chemicals and aerosol products, such as cleaners and disinfectants.
John Patton, a spokesman for Conway Regional Medical Center, said one of the injured was taken to Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock and the other was going to the Little Rock’s Arkansas Children’s Hospital, which has the state’s only burn unit.
Black smoke rising from the site could be seen as far away as Little Rock, 30 miles away. The plume was being carried southward on a light north wind.
Emergency workers evacuated buildings within a half-mile, including an elementary school, a 64-child day-care center and a Kimberly Clark paper factory that employs 540. Students were taken to schools elsewhere in the city of 46,000.
Conway school administrators were gathered with evacuees in a high school auditorium and not available for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Also evacuated was an adult education center operated by the Conway school district and the Oakwood Village mobile home park near the plant.
Stokes said there were a number of unknown chemicals in the Detco building and that emergency workers were concerned about the possibility of another explosion. Another dozen or so plants are nearby.
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department closed an Interstate 40 exit south of the city because all of the roads leading from the exit were in the evacuation zone, spokesman Randy Ort said.
The evacuated area reached one mile to the southwest, south and southeast of the plant and to an area immediately north of it. Schools and businesses that did not close were on standby in case the wind shifted.
The city’s airport, just northeast of the plant, closed briefly after the explosion so people who work near the plant could cut across its runways to escape the plume, airport manager Tim Huey said.
[ More Coverage @ Arkansas NBC ]
Source: The Associated Press © 2004 All Rights Reserved
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