Seperate blasts cited in accident at Timet

Investigators say the accident early Tuesday morning at Titanium Metals Corp. was caused by two separate explosions and the plant manager says that the company will work quickly to ensure against any more such blasts.

Plant Manager John Sanderson said Tuesday afternoon that Timet will reconsider materials used around containers filled with molten magnesium.

Investigators believe that the explosions occurred when 500 to 1,000 pounds of molten magnesium spilled at 12:34 a.m. while being poured into a mold.

Sanderson said the company plans an immediate safety review of how workers handle the lava-like metal, which is used in the production of titanium, a metal used in extensively in airplane engines and sports and medical products.

"We understand our responsibility to protect our employees and the public and have responded quickly to this situation in a way that we believe will improve our overall safety efforts," Sanderson said.

Damage, estimated at about $300,000, was confined to one of three processing areas in the 48-year-old plant surrounded by Henderson homes and businesses.

No one was injured, there was an orderly evacuation of the 40 shift workers, and at no time was the public in any danger any source, including air pollution. A white cloud that formed over the plant after the explosions was non-toxic, according to the Clark County Fire Department.

Mike Cyphers, chemical engineer for the Clark County Fire Department, said the company will have to change its methods of handling molten magnesium.

"The unit where the accident occurred was designed to handle it," he said. "The question is, why did it fail?"

Timet safety engineers told the Clark County Health District that an unidentified operator failed to clear a magnesium feed line in a production area. Up to 1,000 pounds of the molten metal spilled into Unit 10, falling through a grate onto a concrete basement floor.

With the affected unit's pollution-control system damaged in Tuesday's incident, Timet officials have asked the Health District to allow it to operate the unit, one of three at the plant, without pollution controls. That would allow 8 pounds of particles an hour and less than a pound of hydrogen chloride each hour into the community's air, Naylor said. The plant produces 30 million pounds of titanium a year with 660 employees.

The Air Pollution Control Hearing Board, an independent body that enforces the county's clean-air rules, will consider Timet's request at a later date, Naylor said.

Company and county fire investigators have drawn the following sequence of events in the accident:

Water somehow had spilled onto the basement floor, causing the hot magnesium to overflow its holding tank and explode when it hit the water.

That burst spewed flaming metal into the fiberglass-wrapped duct leading to an air-pollution control device known as a scrubber. The scrubber collects particles and dust as magnesium is separated from chlorine in the process.

The 8-inch scrubber duct subsequently exploded through the roof of the building and caught fire, destroying the scrubber, which will take at least three months to replace.

The flames spread to a nearby 15-square-foot area containing a motorized cart and spare tires, which also burned and caused the cloud of smoke hanging over the plant for hours as Henderson and Clark County firefighters waited for the magnesium to burn itself out.

Then crews spread rock salt, which formed a solid dome over the magnesium, robbing the metal of oxygen and smothering the fire at 3:30 a.m.

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