Evacuation ordered after leak at Ohio explosives maker Austin Powder
An area in Vinton County was evacuated after a leak at a manufacturing plant, the sheriff's office said.
The leak happened at about 8:30 a.m. June 11 at the Austin Powder Red Diamond plant at 32000 Powder Plant Road near McArthur, Jackson County Emergency Management director Robert Czechlewski said. The leak released 3,000 gallons of anhydrous nitric acid, which became a plume of nitric oxide gas and prompted an evacuation near the leak.
The Vinton County Sheriff's Office said it was evacuating the Village of Zaleski, State Route 677 and Creek, Morgan and Infirmary roads near the leak. Czechlewski said initially a 3-mile radius around the plant was evacuated and Zaleski, a small village with 750 residents, was evacuated later.
People in the village should evacuate to State Route 278 east of Zaleski and then to U.S. 50 to avoid roadblocks, the sheriff's office said. A shelter was set up at Vinton County High School for people displaced by the evacuation order.
Brad Price, director of the Vinton County Health Department, said the gas could irritate eyes and cause drowsiness. People exposed to the substance should flush their eyes with water. If symptoms persist, they should contact their primary healthcare physician or visit an urgent care facility.
Czechlewski said the National Weather Service is monitoring the nitric oxide plume. Czechlewski and Price said their agencies have not had any reports of hospitalizations.
The evacuations will be lifted when air quality monitoring indicates it is safe, Czechlewski said. He added that similar evacuations have lasted 'a few hours,' but the timeline will depend on the concentration of gases.
Czechlewski said no explosion was reported, and it wasn't clear how employees discovered the leak. It came from a 5,000-gallon tank, he said.
Only relief flights will be allowed to fly through a 30 nautical mile radius surrounding the explosion until June 12, the FAA ordered on June 11.
The flight restriction did not impact John Glenn Columbus International Airport, but it did impact flights out of Rickenbacker International Airport, according to a Columbus Regional Airport Authority spokesperson.
Flight disruptions caused by the plume were resolved by 11 a.m. on June 11, they said.
Austin Powder is "the oldest manufacturing enterprise in Cleveland," according to Case Western Reserve University's Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The company was founded in 1833 to produce explosives for blasting rock and building canals.
The company's LinkedIn profile says it continues to manufacture industrial explosives and provides technical and blasting services around the world. The company moved its manufacturing to McArthur in 1972.
'Though the company was safety-conscious, its history was marked by many explosions,' according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
In 2009, at least 10 employees suffered injuries in a blast at the McArthur plant in a building where workers assemble cord fuses, authorities said, The Dispatch previously reported. One woman died from her injuries months after the blast.
The state fire marshal's office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives later determined that a line of detonating cord that broke during manufacturing caused the blast that injured 10 employees at a Vinton County explosives plant Tuesday.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Public Safety and Breaking News Reporter Bailey Gallion can be reached at bagallion@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Evacuation ordered in Vinton County, Ohio, near Hocking Hills
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