1,000-litre plastic bag-in-box containers mainly filled with 12.5% ammonia leaked outside the workshop of a refrigeration unit maintenance company. Local residents notified the emergency services. Arriving onsite at 5:30 pm, these first responders stopped the leak by closing the valves found open on 3 of the 4 containers present. According to the operator, 2 of the containers had been stored empty, meaning that only 200 litres of ammonia solution would have spilled from one of the mobile reservoirs onto the tarred ground before being diluted and carried away by rainfall.
A city police officer and 4 local residents took ill; vegetation was destroyed over a radius of 2 to 3 m around the warehousing zone. Fire-fighters confined 6 nearby homes and pumped the spilled ammonia. The local treatment plant was notified as a precautionary measure. An elected official and the classified facilities inspectorate visited the site and the Prefecture was duly informed. Malicious intent was suspected.
This fluid, which allows reaching refrigeration temperatures of -10°C, was in most cases delivered directly to clients and only stored inside the facility on an exceptional basis, while awaiting its destruction, when handled as a residual fluid (concentration less than or equal to 12%). The solution involved in this accident had been drained from a refrigeration circuit of a plant located in Limoges subsequent to a dosing error. The workers then stored the bag-in-box containers outside their workshop due to its strong smell. These recovery reservoirs had retained their original labelling, alongside a second tag added by the company indicating the 12% ammonia content.
The last employee had left the site around 5 pm without noticing any anomaly. The site was not closed, a gate shared with another company stayed open all night. The 1st complaint for ammonia odours was received at the police station less than 1 hour after the offices were closed. A third party had opened the valves, perhaps to recover the containers? The company had already been burgled twice during summer 2009.
Afterwards, the operator no longer stored ammonia, even temporarily, onsite.
