Auto parts plant blast: Fire suppression, magnesium acted like a bomb
Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press
May 21, 2018
An explosion during an auto parts plant fire that ultimately stopped production of the Ford F-150 was so violent that it threw a worker through the air into a door jamb. Vehicles in the parking lot caught fire and were damaged by flying debris. A fire "detector did not alert occupants."
The explosion and a subsequent blast early the morning of May 2 at the Meridian Magnesium factory in Eaton Rapids occurred because the fire suppression system at the plant added water to molten magnesium. Experts said that is like arming a bomb.
Firefighters called to the factory went to the maintenance room "and looked at the bottom of the scrap conveyor (where) we saw a white glow in the tunnel. We exited the plant at that time,” Eaton Rapids Fire Chief Roger McNutt wrote in his official report.
The report, made public Monday, said the plant sustained an estimated $8 million in damage. It makes highly specialized auto parts used in Ford F-Series trucks and several other vehicles. General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Mercedes and Ford were affected, with F-Series production fully shut down for eight days.
The Michigan Occupational Health and Safety Administration is investigating the incident.
The factory has a history of safety citations since being acquired in December 2013 by Chinese automotive firm Wanfeng Auto Holding Group. The company has been fined a total of $6,700 for violations of standards relating to worker safety around electrical equipment, die-casting machines and industrial trucks, including separate incidents in which employees suffered burns.
On May 2, the fire report said, “We went to the sprinkler system … and found water was flowing through the pipes … We saw the damage from the first explosion on the west side of the building. I called for an engine to come to my location to extinguish some fire in the mechanical room where no magnesium was. We started to get the engine ready, I sent a firefighter to hook to hydrant. This is when the second explosion occurred.”
It was 2:01 a.m.
“After the second explosion it was reported that there were two employees injured, one by debris that was ejected from the plant and the other employee was injured by the blast of the explosion at the south end of the plant by the scrap tunnel ... We did not try to extinguish any fires at the plant because of the molten mag in the area. The roof of the re-melt building caught fire and burned, there were three machines with two crucibles each with ten thousand pounds of molten mag in them.”
An initial cause of the fire has not been determined.
“With the destruction that the second and third explosions caused, it was impossible to find what caused the first explosion,” McNutt told the Free Press Monday. “The second and third explosions were the result of water and molten magnesium. That was observed by myself and employees of the plant after the first alarm was sounded.”
Livonia Fire Capt. Michael Magda, a team leader for the Western Wayne County Hazardous Materials Response Team, said firefighters would usually use Class D extinguishers on magnesium or other metal fires because the powder would smother the oxygen of a fire and eliminate a reaction.
“When you’re adding little drips of water onto a magnesium fire, it’s exploding and exploding, and all that liquid melting metal then gets onto combustible materials like wood, fabric, carpeting, walls. And then that would start on fire,” Magda said.
The worker was thrown through the room because explosion causes a shock wave.
“That’s how a bomb works,” Magda said. “And this is very typical of magnesium. Once the magnesium is ignited, it explodes when water added to it. It’s going to be a very dynamic incident. A very dangerous incident for firefighters and the surrounding community. They were lucky there were no fatalities.”
Rob Mickey, 38, of Sterling Heights was one of many laborers, ironworkers, riggers and operators called into work by Walbridge construction immediately following the fires reported to dispatch at 1:32 p.m.
“There were two 12-hour shifts to begin,” Mickey said. “The wind that first Friday made some difficulties getting to some critical dies. We knew there was an urgency to retrieve the dies from the building so parts could be made elsewhere, but we still needed to proceed with safety in mind and we were able to balance those two.”
The devastation was all-consuming as Ford and other automakers worked with Meridian Magnesium Products of America to get tools off site to try and produce crucial car parts elsewhere.
“The power of the blast blew a large hole in the roof and back wall of the building, but also triggered every safety hatch on the roof of the building, and those had to be closed before some weather hit on Sunday and Monday,” Mickey said. “It was a coordinated team effort.”
Eaton Rapids Fire Chief McNutt said his team simply vacated the plant immediately.
“We didn’t fight any fire up there. Everything happened too quick," he said. “The only thing we did is set the ladder truck up and look at the top of the building. If there’s any mag fires, we don’t fight them. We let people at the shop do it. But this was beyond their control. They simply evacuated.”
Benjamin Wu, chief legal officer and public affairs director for Meridian Magnesium Products of America, said the insurance company is conducting a third-party investigation at the 200,000- square-foot site.
Wu previously defended the company's safety record, noting that it has one of the better safety records in the die-casting industry. “We always try to prevent accidents. In the manufacturing environment, accidents happen,” he told the Free Press earlier this month. “We have high standards for our safety.
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Ford F-150 pickup supplier had trail of safety violations before blast hit plant
Phoebe Wall Howard, Nathan Bomey, Justin A. Hinkley and Eric Lacy, USA TODAY Network May 11, 2018
Ford has temporarily stopped producing its F-150 trucks because it run out of parts after a fire at a key parts supplier for the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. Aleksandra Michalska reports. Newslook
(Photo: Matthew Dae Smith / Lansing State Journal)
The automotive parts factory where an explosion has resulted in the temporary halt in production of the Ford F-150 pickup has a history of recent safety violations, according to public records.
The violations included separate incidents in which employees suffered burns at Meridian Magnesium Products of America in Eaton Rapids, Mich., according to Michigan safety documents.
Of the safety citations at the plant over the last decade, all occurred after the plant was acquired in December 2013 by Chinese automotive firm Wanfeng Auto Holding Group.
The non-unionized plant's safety record is coming under scrutiny after two people were injured and more than 100 employees were evacuated when a fire and multiple explosions rocked the small mid-Michigan community May 2.
The plant has been cited for seven safety violations — three of them serious — since early 2014, according to public records.
Inspections conducted at the company in 2011 and 2012 resulted in no citations, according to Michigan safety records. Those inspections took place before Wanfeng bought the plant.
In recent years, the plant has been found in violation of Michigan Occupational Safety & Health Administration standards relating to worker safety around electrical equipment, die-casting machines and industrial trucks.
The company was fined a total of $6,700 for those violations, records show.
Violations included:
• An employee "was burned on multiple body parts" on Nov. 1, 2016, because the company did not provide "metal shielding to protect employees from inadvertent metal splash during die casting," according to Michigan OSHA records. The company was fined.
• An employee was "burned by an arc flash explosion" on Sept. 28, 2015, and the company was cited "for not requiring employees to wear appropriate protective equipment and for not requiring them to use insulated tools."
• The company received a serious citation for lacking wheel chocks on powered industrial trucks during an inspection Jan. 13, 2014.
Last week's explosion closed the plant. It stopped the flow of parts to Ford, which, in turn, had to indefinitely suspend all production of the F-150. The pickup is the jewel of the F-series lineup, which qualifies as the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. and is a Ford profit king. The pickup is assembled at two Ford plants.
At the same time, production at the Meridian parts plant could be offline for weeks. The plant makes support parts for the pickup's radiators.
Ford has warned the shutdown will have "an adverse impact on the company's near-term" profit. The incident also forced Meridian's other corporate customers, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz, to adjust production schedules.
Benjamin Wu, chief legal officer and public affairs director for Magnesium Products of America, said the company has one of the better safety records in the die-casting industry. Meridian also operates a factory in Ontario, Canada.
“We always try to prevent accidents. In the manufacturing environment, accidents happen,” Wu said Friday. “We have high standards for our safety. Both facilities have had a long period of time without lost-time incidents. Our Canadian facility went over three years without a single lost-time incident.”
Eaton Rapids Meridian plant manager George Asher said last week that the company followed protocols during the May 2 incident.
"Safety is our primary concern," he said in a statement. "We will provide more information as soon as we are able."
Meridian also had a small fire at the plant about a year ago, but it was contained to one of its molding or casting machines, Abhay (Abe) Vadhavkar, director of manufacturing, engineering and technology at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, told the Detroit Free Press last week.
Asked about that incident, Wu said: “You’re injecting molten metal into (a) die. You’re going to have minor incidents.”
Eaton Rapids Fire Chief Roger McNutt said Meridian intends to rebuild and reopen its entire complex in four months. The plant's roof was destroyed when the north end of the main structure caught fire.
Meridian has hired a crew of about 300 to remove charred debris, McNutt said. The southwest end of the plant reopened Tuesday. About 150 of the company's regular employees were working in parts of the building where there was no damage as of Thursday.