Under a cloud
Page 5
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A MAJOR INCIDENT in which the wrong tanker full of chemicals was delivered to a chemical company, resulting in the release of lethal chlorine gas over a town, has led to Seveille Tank Cleaning being fined £3,600 by Huddersfield magistrates.
The company (CM, January 19) admitted two offences under the Health and Safety at Work Act: failing to give the driver written information of the nature of the substance being carried; and failing to mark the tanker with the required hazard warning signs. It was fined £1,800 on each offence.
Prosecuting counsel for the Health and Safety Executive said that the tanker, which was marked as carrying sodium hypochlorite, had in fact been carrying ferric chloride.
When it was connected to the sodium hypochlorite storage tank at the Slaithwaite premises of Hays Chemicals, a vast cloud of highly toxic chlorine gas was given off.
People had to run for their lives. Local residents had to be evacuated and 29 people received hospital treatment.
The company operated a fleet of tankers from Mort Lane, Tyldesley. A tanker containing sodium hypochlorite had been taken to Liverpool the day before. It was unable to off-load and the tan t< was left at Liverpool. Hays Chemicals then instructed the company to deliver it to Slaithwaite.
The transport manager instructed the driver, Joseph Kimmer, to make the delivery. Mr Kimmer was not told that the tank was in Liverpool. He found a tank in the yard with sodium hypochlorite warning signs and assumed that that was the correct tank.
Mr Kimmer was only given a delivery note. It was not the company's practice to issue written instructions to its drivers about all the dangerous chemicals it carried. The drivers were left to find out for themselves from chemicals manufacturers.
The emergency service had been severely hampered by the lack of written instructions to the driver, normally in the form of a Tremcard left in the cab and by the incorrect warning signs.
Defence counsel said the company's transport manager had come highly recommended after 25 years in haulage and it had thought it could rely upon him.