Dust Explosion at West Pharmaceutical Services

through the West Pharmaceutical Services rubber-manufacturing plant in Kinston, North Carolina, taking the lives of six employees, and injuring 38 others including two firefighters who responded to the accident. The blast occurred without warning at 1:28 p.m. during a routine workday and could be heard 25 miles from the plant. A student at a school more than half a mile away was injured by shattered glass. Flaming debris set woods on fire as far as two miles away. With a sound described by some employees as “rolling thunder,” the explosion blew off exterior siding from the building and sent a fireball and a cloud of smoke rising high into the air. The explosion ignited fires throughout the facility and disabled the building’s sprinkler system. Two 7,500-gallon plastic tanks of mineral oil collapsed from the heat, further fueling the blazes. The largest fire occurred in a rubber storage warehouse, which burned for more than two days. The rubber-manufacturing area of the plant was destroyed, the warehouse collapsed, and most of the building was rendered unusable. The company relocated the plant several miles away but did not resume rubber compounding, resulting in the loss of jobs in Kinston. All the fatalities occurred on the ground level of the plant, mostly in the vicinity of the rubber-production line. In the aftermath of the explosion, many workers were dazed or buried under debris. Responders and other employees equipped with flashlights assisted them out of the plant to triage areas. The most severely injured were airlifted to burn trauma centers. The CSB investigated the accident to determine its root causes. The investigation traced the explosion to a hazard that developed in the plant over the years: combustible dust from a plastic raw material had accumulated on hidden surfaces above the production area, creating the fuel for a massive explosion and fire.