At around 10:30 a.m., a fire broke out on an electric debinding furnace used to separate liquid organic compounds from dry matter at an auto parts company. Five employees attempted to extinguish the fire but were unsuccessful. Seventeen people were mildly sickened by the smoke. The 200 employees present were evacuated. The furnace’s power supply was cut off (the furnace itself was subsequently down for 2 weeks). The fire was contained at 12:23 p.m.

The fire started when one of the components used to treat the furnace’s flue gases was restarted. Tar that had built up ignited when the temperature reached 350 °C. The furnace’s alarms were not working because they had been turned off a few months earlier for maintenance purposes and never turned back on.

An analysis of the root causes of the fire highlighted two issues. First, there was no procedure for restarting the furnaces. Second, the furnaces’ control panels were too accessible, meaning that they could be mistakenly or inadvertently changed.

The operator therefore plans to:

• establish a restart procedure;
• check the furnaces’ settings daily;
• better protect the control panels from unauthorised access;
• improve management of the alarm shunts.

After another accident a few weeks later (ARIA 50827), the operator carried out a more detailed analysis of its root causes. This new analysis revealed a lack of maintenance of the catalysts used to treat the flue gases.