Pollution
Humain
Environnement
Economique

A very smoky fire broke out at 10:23 a.m. at an aerospace plant where a paint booth was being dismantled by a contractor. The plant’s internal emergency plan was implemented and 1500 employees were evacuated. The firefighters brought the fire under control with two foam nozzles. It was finally extinguished at 12:30 p.m. As the paint used in the booth contained chromium-6, the responders were processed through a decontamination corridor. Ultimately, no traces of chromium-6 were found in the extinguishing water, which had been fully collected on the site. Nor were any traces found on the gear worn by the on-site and public firefighters or in the surface samples (51 points) in the facilities. The plant resumed operations the following day at 6:30 a.m. after a loss of 20 hours of production. As a precautionary measure, 14 people were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation. They were discharged that afternoon. One employee was placed on six days’ sick leave for emotional trauma. Damage to several aerospace components that were nearly completed when the fire occurred and localised damage to the roof of the building were reported. While on the scene, the firefighters detected the presence of hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulphide in the smoke-filled part of the building (50% of the surface area). The public firefighters left at around 4:30 p.m. The inspection authorities for classified facilities came to the site.

In the first stage of dismantling the booth, paint residue was removed from the walls using an electric sander and hand scrapers. The electric sander was discontinued following complaints about the noise. One of the workers then began dismantling the bolted inner partition wall while the two others continued scraping by hand. The fire was sparked when a seized nut that had been cut off by an electric angle grinder fell into the booth’s recovery tank, which was filled with paint residue. Although a prevention plan requiring the hot-work permit to be signed by the firefighters had been drawn up, the permit was never signed by them because the contractor had failed to inform them about this stage of the work.

Following the fire, the plant operator modified the hot-work permit approval process, stepped up the training programme for contractors and the methods for passing instructions on to contractors’ employees, and shared feedback with the on-site and public firefighters.