MEC&F Expert Engineers : 02/21/15

Saturday, February 21, 2015

1 WORKER DEAD IN A TANK EXPLOSION AND FIRE IN THE CHEYENNE SALT WATER DISPOSAL SITE IN OKLAHOMA







FEBRUARY 20, 2015

CHEYENNE, OHLAHOMA

One man was found dead after the explosion of a salt water disposal well Friday, authorities said.

A Cheyenne Sheriff said the man was trying to repair something at the top of the unit. That’s when a spark flew and caused a fire to engulf the well.  Later it was determined that a tank had exploded and not the well.

The name of the victim has not been released.

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Updated 2/20/15 at 7:38 p.m.

The fire is out and emergency crews have left the scene.
The injuries have been reported at this time.

Updated 2/20/15 at 5:17 p.m.

The Corporation Commission has reported there was a tank explosion at the Cheyenne Salt Water Disposal well, owned by Overflow Energy out of Texas.
The well did not blow out as they first thought. Still do not have an update on injuries because the fire department is still on scene.

A nearby berm was able to contain the fluids from the tank that exploded.

Updated: 2/20/15 at 4:49 p.m.

The Corporation Commission has confirmed that the well disposal caught fire.

CHEYENNE, Okla. — There has been an accident at a salt water disposal well on Highway 283 south of Cheyenne.

The Cheyenne Fire department is on the scene with the Roger Mills County Sheriff. The number of people injured is unknown at this time.

Typically, a salt water disposal well has one person who works at the disposal, and the truck drivers are the only other people at the well when the they unload their trucks during the day.

One caller says an air ambulance has been called to the scene, but that has not been confirmed.

UTILITY WORKER KILLED DURING TREE TRIMMING IN LUMPKIN COUNTY, GEORGIA





JANUARY 21, 2015

DAHLONEGA , GEORGIA

A utility worker was killed Wednesday afternoon after a tree fell on him while he was working.
According to Lt. Wesley Burnett with the Lumpkin County Sheriff's Office, 27-year-old Brian Johnson was working on a tree near Georgia 400 at Whelchel Road about 2:30 p.m.

"There was a utility crew out there, clearing the right of way for the power lines," said Burnett. "While they were doing the clearing, they were cutting trees and one of the trees fell and actually struck one of the employees."

Burnett said Johnson, who he believes is from Cumming, was killed.

"At this point it seems like just a horrible accident," Burnett said.

No further details were released by Burnett. Blake House with Sawnee EMC confirmed that Johnson was a Sawnee EMC worker.

"Mr. Johnson sustained severe injuries from the accident, and was later pronounced dead at the scene by emergency response personnel," said House in a press statement.

"The entire Sawnee EMC family is deeply saddened by this tragedy. At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with the family of this young man.

WARNING OVER TOXIC FUMES IN PLANE CABINS. CORONER URGES ACTION TO PREVENT DEATHS AFTER WARNING TOXIC FUMES IN CABIN AIR POSE A HEALTH RISK TO FREQUENT FLIERS AND AIRCREW




FEBRUARY 21, 2015

Toxic fumes in cabin air pose a health risk to frequent fliers and aircrew, a coroner has said in a landmark report. 

Stanhope Payne, the senior coroner for Dorset, said people regularly exposed to fumes circulating in planes faced “consequential damage to their health”. 

Mr Payne, who is inquiring into the death of Richard Westgate, a British Airways pilot, called on BA and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to take “urgent action to prevent future deaths”. Most airline passengers, who fly only occasionally, will not be affected by the problem, but some frequent travellers who are genetically susceptible to the toxins could fall ill. 

Mr Payne’s call for urgent action is likely to be welcomed by campaigners who have raised similar concerns for a number of years. 

His report, obtained by the Telegraph, is the first official UK recognition of so-called “aerotoxic syndrome”, a phenomenon long denied by airlines but which is blamed by some for the deaths of at least two pilots and numerous other incidents where pilots have passed out in flight. Co-pilots can normally take over, but campaigners claim the syndrome is a suspected cause of some mid-air disasters. 

Frank Cannon, the lawyer for Mr Westgate’s case, said: “This report is dynamite. It is the first time a British coroner has come to the conclusion that damage is being done by cabin air, something the industry has been denying for years.” 

Mr Cannon said he was acting for approximately 50 other aircrew allegedly affected by the syndrome, working for airlines including Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Thomas Cook and easyJet. He is also representing two passengers. 

Commercial passenger planes have a system which compresses air from the engines and uses it to pressurise the cabin. But it can malfunction, with excess oil particles entering the air supply. 

In a confined space, with the air recirculated, the cumulative effect on frequent fliers, especially aircrew, can be harmful, the coroner said. 

Mr Westgate, a senior first officer, died in 2012 after claiming he had been poisoned by toxic cabin fumes. 

In his “prevention of future deaths report”, produced last week, the coroner says that examinations of Mr Westgate’s body “disclosed symptoms consistent with exposure to organophosphate compounds in aircraft cabin air”. 

In the report, sent to the chief executive of BA and the chief operating officer of the Civil Aviation Authority, the coroner raises five “matters of concern”, including that “organophosphate compounds are present in aircraft cabin air”; that “the occupants of aircraft cabins are exposed to organophosphate compounds with consequential damage to their health” and that “impairment to the health of those controlling aircraft may lead to the death of occupants”. He also says there is no real-time monitoring to detect failures in cabin air quality and that no account is taken by airlines of “genetic variation in the human species that would render individuals … intolerant of the exposure”. 

He demands that BA and the CAA respond to the report within eight weeks, setting out the action they propose to take. The report, made under regulation 28 of the Coroners’ Investigation Regulations 2013, is not a full verdict from an inquest, which has yet to be held in this case. 

Tristan Loraine, a former BA captain who claims toxic air poisoning forced him to leave his job, said: “I took ill-health retirement only a year after completing the Iron Man triathlon. I had about 10 medical experts give their view to the CAA that I was suffering from ill-health effects of contaminated air. 

“From the minute I got sick until when I left the airline, I never saw a BA employee.” 

Mr Loraine, who is making a documentary about the issue, said he had been left with numbness in his fingers and feet and that he sometimes found it difficult to recall information. He said that a friend in BA — not Mr Westgate — had suffered the same symptoms, continued to fly and died from a brain tumour aged 44. 

Mr Cannon said: “There are major crashes where we suspect the only plausible explanation is that the crew were suffering from cognitive dysfunction. More commonly, it causes incredible misery — very fit, intelligent and motivated people fall over sick. The first thing BA and other airlines have to do is recognise and take care of their injured aircrew.” 

Most passengers who fly only occasionally will not be affected by the problem, but some frequent travellers who are genetically susceptible to the toxins could fall ill, with around 10 per cent of the population affected. Their bodies are unable to detoxify quickly enough and an accumulation of toxic material over time becomes dangerous. The main vulnerability is suffered by aircrew, who spend much of their lives on board. 

Official records from the Civil Aviation Authority show that oxygen masks are being used by pilots and crew at the rate of at least five times a week to combat suspected “fume events”. 

The official safety watchdog, the Air Accident Investigation Branch, has called for aircraft to be fitted with equipment to detect any contamination of cabin air.
A spokesman for BA said it could not comment on the case, but would consider the coroner’s report and respond. The airline cites independent studies commissioned by the Department for Transport, which found “no evidence that pollutants occur in the cabin air at levels exceeding available health and safety standards”. 

The Government’s position is that “concerns about significant risk to the health of airline passengers and crew are not substantiated”. A spokesman for the CAA said it would consider the report in detail but claimed it was “nothing that passengers or crew should be overly concerned about”. 

Mr Cannon said: “I see this as an impending tsunami for the airline industry — it’s been ignored for so long.” 

The disclosure of Mr Payne’s report comes ahead of a meeting in London this week of a group set up by the International Transport Workers’ Federation to examine the issue of contaminated air on planes. A spokesman for the ITF said: “There is growing published evidence of the toxicity of these oil fumes and the increase in reported fume incidents in which flight safety was compromised because of crew member impairment.”

TWO DEAD IN ELGIN, ILLINOIS CAR CRASH. THE VEHICLE CRASHED INTO A TREE, KILLING TWO OF THE THREE OCCUPANTS



FEBRUARY 21, 2015

ELGIN, ILLINOIS

Two people died early Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in northwest suburban Elgin.

The crash happened shortly after midnight in the 1100 block of Forest Drive, where a vehicle carrying three people left the roadway and crashed into a tree, according to a statement from Elgin police.

The force of the impact required rescue workers to extricate two of the three people inside the vehicle, police said. All three were taken to Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin, where two of the occupants were later pronounced dead, police said. The third person is in serious condition.

Forest Drive will remain closed while officials investigate the crash.

Autopsies were scheduled for Saturday. Further details were not immediately available.

Anyone with information about the crash is asked to call police at (847) 289-2661.

This appears to be a drunk driving accident, and/or excessive speed for the conditions of the road;  we will wait for the results of the autopsy to confirm our hypothesis.

THE YOUNG AND THE ELDERLY ARE THE MOST FREQUENT VICTIMS OF FIRES: FIRE CLAIMS LIVES OF 2 CHILDREN IN PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO. CAUSE AND ORIGIN OF FIRE IS UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME










FEBRUARY 21, 2015

WEST ALEXANDRIA, PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO (WDTN)

The town of West Alexandria in Preble County is heartbroken after the loss of two children in house fire early Saturday morning.

Now a family must move forward after the loss of a son and a daughter.
When we stopped by the burnt out house tonight, the family had just finished putting up this memorial for the kids killed.

The fire happened very early this morning but news of it traveled very quickly through town.

"Around here you know, you hear somebody got hurt, their kids got hurt, everybody wants to know what happened? Who it was?" said Beau Bradley who has lived in the area most of his life.

There's only a shell left of the house in the 3400 block of U.S. 35.
Crews were called to the scene around 3:30 a.m. When they arrived, part of the home had already collapsed, but no one knew about the two kids in the basement.

"There didn't appear to be anybody home at the time. We weren't quite sure, did a 360, no vehicle in the driveway down the lane. So we were under the assumption that nobody was home,” said Jeff Shafer, the Fire Chief for West Alexandria.

The nine-year-old little boy and his 10-year-old sister were found in the basement.

Bradley has kids of his own and says his heart goes out to the family.
"Small town, you know everybody. Even if I didn't know her well, I know people that are related to her and you just feel it. It grabs you, if it was your own how would you feel?" said Bradley.

Beau says he got a call from Twin Valley South Elementary letting parents know about the tragedy. He says the community will do what it can for the family.

"Anybody around here will help out. Again, terrible, just I feel terrible for them," said Bradley.

Investigators haven't released the names of the two children and there is no cause as to what started the fire.

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WEST ALEXANDRIA, OHIO

Two children have died following a house fire in West Alexandria. It happened Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015. 

West Alexandria crews were called to a home in the 3400 block of U.S. Route 35 just after 3:30 a.m. Units from Eaton, Lewisburg and Gasper Township were also called in to assist. 

When they arrived, part of the home had already collapsed. 

Investigators found the victims in the basement hours later. Their names and ages haven't been released yet. 

The house is a total loss. The cause of the fire is under investigation.