Nov 7, 2007 11:34 pm US/Eastern
Workers In Salem Plant Explosion Die From Injuries
SALEM (AP) ―
Three workers at Salem Harbor Power Station were killed after a water tube on a boiler exploded, burning them with high pressure steam, authorities said Wednesday.
Dominion, the Richmond, Va.-based energy company that owns the power station, said the men were repairing a fan on the ground floor near the boiler on Tuesday when the tube ruptured about 20 feet above and blew steam on them. The men were burned on their heads, hands, faces and necks.
Mathew Indeglia, 20, of Lawrence; Mark Mansfield, 41, of Peabody; and Phillip Robinson, 56, of Beverly, died after being taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, according to Salem police Detective John Doyle.
A hospital spokeswomen said the men died between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.
The company said two were operators and one was a mechanic.
Robinson and Mansfield had both worked at the plant for more than 20 years.
Indeglia had just started working at the plant two days before the accident.
"All of Dominion is greatly saddened at the deaths of these men," said Thomas F. Farrell II, Dominion chairman, president and chief executive officer. "They were valuable members of our Salem Harbor family. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families."
Mansfield had three daughters and Robinson also was a father.
"These gentlemen that were sadly killed yesterday in this accident were some of the best trained power plant workers that I have ever had the pleasure of representing and working for," he said.
The tragedy has devastated the community.
"It hurts so bad, and I don't even know why," said a friend of the victims, Gary Finley.
Finley worked at Salem Harbor Power Station for 20 years and knew Mansfield and Robinson.
The federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration has inspected the plant once in the last five years, in March 2006, and no citations were issued, OSHA spokeswoman Ted Fitzgerald said. The agency is investigating Tuesday's accident, Fitzgerald said.
The power station was shut down Wednesday for an undetermined period so the company could assist employees and conduct a full safety review, the company said.
"There was nothing to indicate there was a problem until the actual burst," said Gary Courts, managing director of Dominion Virginia Power.
The boiler tubes contain high-pressure, high-temperature water and steam that turn the turbine-generator, which spins to produce electricity. The company said there were no indications of any problems before the rupture. Courts said at an afternoon press conference that the 59-year-old boiler passed its annual inspection in April.
Courts said boiler pipes burst all the time but always happen inside the boiler, whereas, this explosion occurred outside the boiler.
"Exactly what happened and exactly what tube or tubes ruptured, we don't know," Courts said.
The coal-fired plant was purchased by Dominion in 2005. It employs 145 people and produces enough electricity for 740,000 homes.
Dominion bought the plant after the previous owner, PG&E National Energy Group Inc., went bankrupt. Under PG&E, the plant was known as one of Massachusetts' "filthy five" dirtiest power plants.
Dominion now uses low sulfur coal and has re-tuned its burners, said Seth Kaplan, vice president for climate advocacy for The Conservation Law Foundation. But the company hasn't invested as heavily in pollution controls as it has in the Brayton Point Station in Somerset, which it bought at the same time, Kaplan said.
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