At 6.10 am, a wood dust explosion rocked a panel manufacturing plant in a 360 m³ silo containing 30 m³ of dry chips (silo A). The accident occurred while the reservoir was being emptied, just 5 days after an earlier fire at the site (ARIA No. 28990). The silo involved in this accident is adjacent to a second dry chip silo (silo B) having a capacity of 360 m³.The production crew and the site’s firemen initiated the manual water injection systems inside and around silos A and B and inside the redler conveyors that supply silo A. The 30 external firemen, called to assist in the firefighting operations, set up a fire nozzle on silo A at 6.24 am. The cooling operation initiated a 2nd explosion (fumes, water gas, dust in suspension?).The incident opened the silo’s vents and projected dust and flames onto the adjacent production building. The fire spread via the electric wires before it was contained by the building’s sprinkler system and extinguished by the emergency services. A thermal imaging camera was used to check for residual hot spots in the silo and emptied silo B, which had caught fire 5 days earlier, in order to perform the same tests. A site fireman monitored the installations until noon the following day. The firefighting water was recovered in a catchpit, then analysed and treated. The shutdown of the production line for 14 hours resulted in production losses estimated at 45K euros.The silos vents had to be replaced and the production building’s electrical installations repaired. According to the accident report, smouldering fires had remained after the fire of January 20th under the extraction unit, a 2-ton piece of bell-shaped equipment at the base of the silo. During this fire, the reservoir had been emptied, flushed and cleaned but this piece of equipment had not been raised. The operator initiated a third party expert evaluation of the installations, safety systems and intervention procedures, and the use of a thermal imaging camera to check the installations before, during and after an accident. Further more, the operator also modified the intervention and silo restart procedures; in the event hot spots (embers) are detected, the extraction unit will be raised for cleaning.

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