MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — The deputy fire marshal of the town where a power plant explosion killed five people tells The Associated Press that no one is believed buried in the rubble.
The comments today by Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano mean the death toll likely will stand at five from the gas explosion the day before.
Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said in a statement that everyone assigned to work at the Kleen Energy plant is accounted for. He said there have been no recovery efforts there today because the site is too unsafe.
Sunday morning’s blast at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, about 20 miles south of Hartford, killed five and injured a dozen or more others. It happened as workers were clearing gas lines of air, but the exact cause remained under investigation.
“I lost a couple of good friends up there,” Michael Rosario, a business representative with the local Plumbers and Pipefitters union, said as he broke down crying today. “I’m just so sorry something like this happened. They’re all great people. We’re all brothers and sisters.”
He added, “There’s still a lot of unanswered questions.”
Welders and other workers were at the site today, preparing to make it safer for emergency personnel, said Ed Reilly, president of the Greater Hartford-New Britain Building Trades Council.
Santostefano earlier had said about five people remained unaccounted of the nearly 100 workers who were at the plant, citing conversations with contractors and labor union officials.
Investigators returned to the scene today to try to begin determining the cause.
Piles of rubble were 10 feet tall in some parts of the plant, and mounds of rubble and debris were everywhere, he said.
The explosion was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away.
The blast left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing at the site, which is near Wesleyan University on a wooded and hilly 137-acre parcel of land overlooking the Connecticut River.
Rescue crews combed through the debris until about 2:30 a.m. today.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was mobilizing a team of workers from Colorado and hoped to have them on the scene by midday today, spokesman Daniel Horowitz said.
The nearly completed 620-megawatt plant is being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the nation’s electricity. Workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging a gas line, clearing it of air, when the explosion occurred around 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Santostefano said.
Santostefano said workers were at the site Sunday because they were trying to get the plant open on time — the opening was slated for sometime in the middle of 2010 — but added, “It wasn’t like they were working in a frenzy.”
One of those killed was Raymond Dobratz, a 58-year-old plumber from Old Saybrook, said his son Erik Dobratz, who called the elder man “a great dad.”
Lynn Hawley, of Hartland, Conn., said her 36-year-old son, Brian Hawley, is a pipefitter at the plant and broke his leg. She said he called her from his cell phone to say he was being rushed to a hospital.
“He really couldn’t say what happened to him,” she said. “He was in a lot of pain, and they got him into surgery as quickly as possible.”
Hospital officials didn’t immediately release the conditions of the other injured people, whose wounds ranged from minor to very serious.
The thundering blast shook houses for miles.
“I felt the house shake,” Middletown resident Steve Clark said. “I thought a tree fell on the house.”
Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said he heard it as he was leaving church.
“It felt almost like a sonic boom,” he said.
Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on the plant in February 2008. It had signed a deal with Connecticut Light and Power for the electricity produced by the plant, and would be one of the biggest built in New England in the last few years.
The company is run by former City Councilman William Corvo. A message left at Corvo’s home was not returned. Calls to Gordon Holk, general manager of Power Plant Management Services, which has a contract to manage the plant, also weren’t returned.
Energy Investors Funds, a private equity fund that indirectly owns a majority share in the power plant, said it was cooperating with authorities.
Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They’ve identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
