Cause of flash fire still inconclusive

Press, 17 June 1983, Page 2

Cause of flash fire still inconclusive

Investigations by the Labour Department and the Auckland Fire Service have so far not been able to establish the cause of Wednesday’s flash fire in the control building at the Marsden Point refinery expansion project, according to Mr Geoffrey Minchin, its public relations officer. The investigations will continue today but in the meantime the contractor building the refinery expansion, JV2, will continue the suspension of all work on the control building until it has been declared safe.

The JV2 project manager, Mr Jack Hardie, said yesterday that the analysis of trace amounts of flammable liquid, found in the building, had shown that they did not match with products from the operating refinery such as blended or refined petrol. He said the nature of the vapour which caused the fire, and how it got into the building, had not been identified. Solvents and adhesives of various types were being used inside the building and the possibility that these could have caused or contributed to the fire has not been discounted, he said. Groundwater samples taken from dewatering Eoints close to the control uilding showed an entirely different chemical structure from samples taken from inside the building, he said.

Tests had been carried out on surface areas elsewhere on the site, including excavations, and no significant sign of any gases or fumes had been deteced, said Mr Hardie. About 10 workers were in the vicinity at the time of the fierce fire, which was extinguished by a refining company engine, according to a Press Association report from Auckland. Two witnesses have described hearing a loud explosion, “something similar to exploding petrol vapours.” Four injured workers were taken to Whangarei Hospital. Mr Joseph Henry and Mr Richard Carse, both aged 18, are still in intensive care, suffering from serious bums.

Mr Keith Wellington, aged 21, and Mr Don Blampied, aged 53, are reported in a satisfactory condition. Mr Wellington, the least

injured of the four, suffered bums to the face, arms, and hands. “All I saw was a big wall of fire racing towards me. The whole room was like a big blow torch. I closed my eyes. When the burning stopped I looked down and my arms were on fire,” he said. “I’d just gone out to get a pair of ear muffs and was coming back into the room when it happened.” Mr Wellington waited until the flames had died back and then climbed out of the basement on a ladder to a toilet where he doused himself with water. “When I first started climbing the ladder the pain was not too bad, but by the time I had got the water on I felt as if my hands had been cooked. “It was a long trip to hospital. There was a bucket of water in the ambulance which I kept putting my hands in.” Mr Wellington described how a leading hand, Mr Friday Henry, had climbed back into the room after the explosion, when flames were still licking about the floor, and dragged the two most badly burned workers out. “The two men most badly hurt were right in there where the fire came from. I saw then rolling round, on fire,” he said. Mr Wellington believes the hard hat he was wearing at the time saved his eyes and some of his face from more serious burns. He said another worker had told him of smelling petrol fumes just before the explosion. ? ‘He said he had smelt fumes and it was not safe to work in there. It was just after he said that that the whole thing went up, just like a big gas. torch,” Mr Wellington said.