Area 24 Bayer Plat Explosion 8/28/2008
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Mr. Barry Withrow
 
 
 
 
INSTITUTE, W.Va. -- Authorities have identified the man killed in the explosion at the Bayer Crop Science plant in Institute that rocked homes miles away.
 
Barry Withrow, of Cross Lanes, worked at the plant for more than 20 years, said Kanawha County Emergency Services Director Dale Petry.
Withrow was missing for several hours after the explosion, which was reported at 10:36 p.m. Thursday. Emergency crews recovered his body between 3 and 4 a.m. today, Petry said.
A second employee was injured and transported to the West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh. That worker's identity has not been released.
The blast shook homes for several miles. A resulting blaze burned for a few hours as firefighters battled it into the early morning.
Officials lifted a shelter-in-place order for thousands of people in the area.
W.Va. 25, U.S. 60 Interstate 64 and Goff Mountain Road all are open to traffic this morning. They had been closed for much of the night.
The explosion and fire occurred at the West Carbamoylation Center at the plant, according to Bayer officials.
"There was a chemical release in the immediate area of the structure which developed into a fire several minutes later," stated a press release. "The fire was brought under control by emergency response personnel from the site, and was extinguished at about 2 a.m. after operations employees completed the isolation of the operating equipment.
 "This is a very sad day for the Institute site family. At this time we do not have a cause for the incident and cannot speculate as to what happened. Our utmost concern is for the safety of our employees and the community. This incident will be thoroughly investigated. The unit is totally shutdown; it will not be restarted in the future until its safe operation can be completely assured."
Institute site leader Nick Crosby said air quality tests conducted around the site determined that no harmful chemical exposure resulted from the blaze.
He said people in the area may smell a foul odor, but there are no harmful effects.
Crosby said the plant was awaiting Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors to determine what caused the blast.
"There's significant damage to the unit," Crosby said. "The important thing is that there's no way we'll restart that unit until it's been fully investigated."
Bayer employees were encouraged to come to work Friday, but Crosby said some units remained idle out of respect to employees' wishes.
"It's a family here," he said. "We lost a family member."
Crosby said one of the main chemicals involved in the explosion was methomyl, an insecticide used to produce Larvin, a pesticide.
Officials said this morning the chemical that burned is used in the production of the pesticide and that Bayer just recently restarted those operations at the Institute site.
The process is usually conducted at the plant seven or eight months a year, he said, before the unit is shut down for a few months and inspected. Then the process starts up again.
Crosby said the plant restarted the methomyl process a week ago, but stressed that there was nothing unusual about that.
"As far as we can tell at this state, no one has put their arms up and said, 'This was wrong,'" Crosby said. "We're not getting any comments of this type."
He said the explosion started in a residue cleanup section of the plant.
"Something went wrong in that cleanup process," he said.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, methomyl is a highly toxic pesticide. But Crosby said no toxins were exposed to the air because of a decomposition reaction.
"There's no danger to human health," he said. "I can confirm that our monitoring system did not detect anything."
Other chemicals involved in the explosion were dimethyl disulfide, methylisobutylketone and hexane, a Bayer official told Kanawha County officials at about 1:30 a.m. All three are "harmful irritants," according to information provided to Kanawha officials
The three are used to make methomyl.
Emergency sirens could be heard from the plant across the river in Jefferson where many had gathered to observe. Billowing clouds of smoke hung over the skies of western Kanawha County as firefighters worked to contain the blaze.
Authorities ordered residents of South Charleston, Dunbar, Jefferson, Nitro, St. Albans, Cross Lanes and Institute to stay in their homes and shelter in place.
Workers at the Jefferson Go-Mart across the river from the plant who asked to remain unidentified said they thought someone had hit their building when they heard the blast.
A block away from the plant, students at West Virginia State University sitting on benches around campus ran inside after the explosion.
West Virginia State, which is adjacent to the plant, did not cancel classes today.
"All of the sudden the sky lit up like it was the sun, then you heard a boom and everybody took off," said student David George.
Inside Sullivan Hall, the campus' largest residential complex, disbelief escalated into chaos, said student David Jennings.
University officials told students to stay inside and turn off their air conditioners to prevent air from being sucked in.
Outside, authorities blocked off the interstate in both directions. Some students who had cars or people who could pick them up said they felt trapped.
In meetings with Bayer over the years, WVSU has been told that it is best to stay inside rather than go out into the air if something were to happen, according to university spokesperson Pat Dickinson.
But Jennings said, "I didn't like the fate of my life in the hands of, 'Maybe it's nothing.'"
But Jennings added that authorities inside the residence halls did a good job of keeping students informed and easing the stress. He said a page system used by the university helped.
Kanawha County deputies and State Police were on the scene at the plant along with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Petry, the county's emergency services coordinator, said a handful of units were dispatched to the scene, including the Kanawha County Ambulance Authority and fire departments from St. Albans, Nitro, Dunbar and Tyler Mountain.
Petry said explosion reports included a fireball shooting 300 feet in the air at the plant.
"You could feel it for a couple miles around," Petry said. "It shook a lot of places."
He said the state Department of Environmental Protection was on the scene all night and had not found any problems with the air quality.
Officers with the St. Albans Police Department were across the Kanawha River from the plant when the explosion happened.
St. Albans Lt. T.A. Kemper and Sgt. M.J. Dlugos observed the fireball and saw smoke coming from the plant, according to a news release from the department.
The officers notified Metro 911 right away. The department said it was one of the first notifications that isolated the area of the explosion, the news release said.
Shortly afterward, the police department dispatched 10 officers to assist with traffic control.
The department, in conjunction with Nitro police, closed the Dick Henderson Bridge and then closed traffic at Kanawha Terrace and U.S. 60 in Jefferson, the news release said.
The city of St. Albans also initiated its own emergency operations center.