BY JENNIFER BANATHY
METHUEN, Massachusetts - On Monday, December 11, just after 8:00 p.m., an explosion ripped through Malden Mills, a textile plant here. One of the largest mills in New England, Malden employs 2,400 people, 700 of whom were on site at the time of the blast.
The explosion blew away a large part of the flocking division building, where fiber particles are glued to a cloth backing. The force of the blast knocked out the entire sprinkler system at once.
Aided by fierce winds and feeding off huge wooden planks soaked with years of oils, solvents, and soaps, as well as propane used for fork lift operation, the wild blaze sped to several other buildings, which were completely razed.
More than 30 workers were injured. Eight are in critical condition, two of whom have burns that cover more than 75 percent of their bodies.
One worker, Pablito Coplin-Hilton, commented, "They were working on the flock line. The flock, it was all over their skin. When the flock is burning, it becomes part of your skin, you can't get it off."
"We got outside and found people so burned that the rubber gloves they were wearing were melted on their hands," another worker explained. "We had to use scissors to cut people's shirts off because they were so burned. Everybody was in shock."
Workers in the woven division, in an adjoining building to the flocking division, described how smoke started pouring into their building. Their pleas for evacuation were denied by their supervisors, who told them to remain inside because the fire was not in their building. Employees said the first explosion appeared to take place in the area of an oil-fired boiler that superheats the ovens used in the manufacturing process.
In March 1993 a similar explosion and fire in the flocking division left six workers injured. Frank Gravett, an area manager of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), stated in a telephone interview that the inspection following the explosion and fire in 1993 cited the owner of Malden Mills for inadequate emergency action plans and for lack of automatic fire detection and suppression systems on the production lines. He said that OSHA is now investigating the December 11 incident.
The disaster immediately idled 1,400 workers. The federal government is promising to file emergency legislation to ensure that those left jobless by the fire will receive unemployment checks before Christmas. Discussions are also being held to determine how much emergency assistance can be delivered to the area.
Malden Mills president Aaron Feuerstein claimed December 12 he does not understand "how the fire moved so quickly, because we have installed the most modern sprinkler system." He acknowledged there had been fines by OSHA, but insisted that the safety issues cited were "minor, minor, minor."