By Randy Ludlow and Mary Beth Lane
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2007 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
BEVERLY, Ohio — Investigators are searching for the cause of an explosion yesterday that killed a truck driver and injured nine workers at a coal-burning power plant.
The driver was delivering pressurized hydrogen gas to American Electric Power’s Muskingum River Plant, where it is used as a coolant in the plant generators.
The explosion occurred about 9:20 a.m., said Melissa McHenry, spokeswoman for Columbus-based AEP.
The force of the blast shredded, blackened and punched holes into the metal siding on the exterior of one of the plant’s five units, and it injured nine workers who were inside at the time and within 70 feet of the explosion.
The workers were taken to five area hospitals with injuries that were deemed not life-threatening, McHenry said.
It was unknown whether it was the truck or the 10 hydrogen tubes it carried that exploded, or why, McHenry said.
The man killed was Lewis Timmons, 61, of Middlebourne, W.Va., and he worked for General Hydrogen, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.
General Hydrogen is a subsidiary of Cryogenics Gas Inc., a company based in Washington, Pa., which also supplies hydrogen to other AEP plants, spokeswoman Eileen Zullo said.
AEP officials would not immediately identify the injured workers.
The blast at the plant along the Muskingum River in Washington County, about 75 miles southeast of Columbus, reverberated through the river valley. It was felt in Beverly, a village about 3 miles to the southeast.
Jo Ann Clark, a 48-year-old Beverly resident, was preparing to leave for her job at a local BP gas station when she heard and felt the explosion.
“It was a roar and a boom,” she said. “It rattled the windows. It sure did shake the town up.”
Four of the plant’s units continued to hum along yesterday, generating electricity. But unit five, the closest to the blast, was shut down. It is the newest and largest of the five units at the plant and generates 585 megawatts of the plant’s normal 1,425-megawatt capacity, company officials said.
The Muskingum River Plant has 210 workers, McHenry said. This was the first fatality in five or six years, since an employee fell into the river and drowned, officials said.
“We will be conducting a thorough investigation to determine the cause of this explosion,” plant manager Dan Kohler said in a news release.
Federal safety officials were at the plant yesterday to investigate.
Although hydrogen gas is highly explosive, it is used to cool steam generators at the plant because it has a high capacity for heat and is more efficient than using air.
Hydrogen is delivered to the plant about once a week, AEP spokeswoman Vikki Michalski said.