Pollution
Humain
Environnement
Economique

At a plant specialised in the manufacturing of washers, nuts and elastic rings (circlips), a fire releasing a major smoke plume broke out around 10:30 am on an electrical cabling assembly in a pit under a heat treatment furnace, following a leak of melted salts from the evaporator on the soaking installation. The 3 employees onsite were not able to extinguish the flames using a powder extinguisher and exited the workshop to shut off the outside valve on the methanol network supplying the installations. The alarm was sounded and energy supply to the workshop was cut. The forty or so fire-fighters deployed to the scene were hampered by a lack of visibility, but nonetheless extinguished the blaze with a foam nozzle around 1:30 pm after identifying its precise location. The emergency response intervention ended at 3:15 pm following ventilation of the pit underneath the treatment furnace and a full search for hotspots using a thermal camera.

No injuries were reported; total property damage was estimated at €100,000. Wear due to slow oxidation of the salt evaporator tank sheet metal had caused this leak. Subsequent to the accident, the operator installed a retention basin and raised the level of monitoring on the salt evaporator of each heat treatment line.