Inspectors to Dismantle Blasted Plant Investigators Want a Closer, Safer Look
By MARY LANDERS
SAVANNAH – The federal Chemical Safety Board enters a new stage this week in its investigation into the cause and sequence of the Feb. 7 explosion and fire that killed 13 people at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth.
Cranes will lift damaged equipment – such as a bucket elevator, some dust collectors and packaging machines – out of the crumpled packaging building to allow for closer inspection.
“We’ll lift it out and put it in set-down areas so it can be examined,” said Stephen Selk, manager of investigations for the chemical board. “Right now, you can’t get up there.”
The limited access is hampering the investigation, which has determined where some of the explosions occurred but not in what order.
“We have to make the site safe for entry,” Selk said. “It’s still a very dangerous site. It’s expected to take two months to lift all that out.”
On Friday, Imperial CEO John Sheptor gave reporters their first tour of the plant since the explosion.
It looked much as it did in aerial photos in the immediate aftermath of the fires, which started in the packaging building. That structure, which included three sugar-storage silos, was destroyed. It remains a solemn tangle of twisted metal.
Looking at it, Sheptor marveled that employees not only escaped, but also that they were able to go back in to pull out co-workers. Sheptor was on-site when the explosion occurred and was on his way to a tour of the packaging area when his wife called him.
“We talked three or four minutes, and that was the difference between me being there and not,” he said.
Imperial has called 225 of its 371 workers back to work. With the packaging area destroyed, however, most aren’t doing their normal jobs. And all had Good Friday off.
On what passes for an ordinary day now, one crew works in the warehouse, where about 8 million pounds of sugar – about a day’s normal production – is waiting to be shipped out. Before it can go, the thousands of pallets of sugar must be checked for damage.
Sheptor pointed to a nearby pallet of 5-pound Dixie Crystal bags as an example. The top layer was covered in dust and flecked with burnt sugar. Workers will remove such damaged packages, save the sugar for reprocessing, and re-wrap the pallets.
“We’re doing thorough testing,” said Dwayne Zeigler, a 21-year employee at the plant who was the production manager before the blast and is now the senior manager for construction engineering. “We don’t want sugar in the grocery store that smells like smoke.”
The federal Food and Drug Administration tests the sugar before it can be sold, Zeigler said.
Some employees now spend their workdays escorting investigators – from OSHA, the chemical board and insurance companies – who fill four new trailers on site. A fifth trailer houses Imperial’s lawyers.
Others are working at a Garden City warehouse receiving shipments of sugar from Imperial’s Louisiana plant.
Imperial expects to restart the Port Wentworth refinery this year, Sheptor said. The exact date depends on when the investigations are completed.
Once the refinery is running again, the plant can resume the bulk rail shipments of sugar that make up 70 percent of its business, Sheptor said.
He predicted it would take about 18 to 24 months to design and build a new packaging plant.
The company’s engineers have begun the redesign and are purchasing some packaging equipment.
In the meantime, he expects to set up some packaging lines, enough to handle about one-fifth of the plant’s normal output for grocery stores, in the undamaged warehouse on-site.
Imperial’s board has not voted to approve reconstruction of the Port Wentworth plant, but Sheptor said it will.
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