Prior planning helps First Responders in incidents like Bowater chemical spill

Authorities say a rupture in a chemical transmission at the Resolute Forest Products plant in southern York County this weekend sent four employees to the hospital with serious chemical burns.

[media-credit name=”Resolute Forest Products/provided” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]Just after 8:30 a.m. Saturday, York County Emergency Management Director Cotton Howell said a line filled with sodium hydroxide in a pulping area burst, spraying the cooking compound on the four workers.

York County authorities were dispatched to the plant in Catawba just after 9 o’clock, after Howell says the plant’s first responders tended to the situation, followed by the Leslie Volunteer Fire Department and Piedmont EMS.

Howell says that prior planning and coordination allowed the two rescue agencies to know exactly what they were walking in to.

Howell says there’s also accountability measures in place to make sure local authorities are aware of incidents involving hazardous chemicals, even where there are not serious injuries.

Twelve years ago, two welders were killed and several others were injured after an explosion in an outdoor tank on the plant property. Howell said incidents like this weekend’s — and the one in 2000 — require an immediate report to federal regulators.

The Resolute Forest Products plant, commonly known as the Bowater plant, opened more than half a century ago, employs 767 workers.

According to Resolute Forest Products, the plant received two citations from the AbitibiBowater Board of Directors for marking 500-thousand hours without a recordable injury in 2008 and 2010.