News

Valve that landed in yard not Danversport blast culprit

By Ethan Forman
Staff writer
Published: May 16, 2008

DANVERS — This valve is no smoking gun.

Janet Lettich of Riverside Street found a valve by a tree in her front yard as she fled her wrecked home amid the early morning chaos of Nov. 22, 2006, after the Danversport chemical plant blew up.

The lead investigator for U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said the valve she saved is not the steam valve on mix tank 3, which investigators theorize was left open.

"This valve is too small for it to be that valve," Jon Vorderbrueggen said yesterday.

Vorderbrueggen, an engineer with more than 30 years' experience in process safety, said the pipe and valve probably were part of a line used to carry compressed air. Not only is the valve the wrong size for the steam valve, it has quick-disconnect features typical of an air line hooked up to a central air compressor, he said.

The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that sorts through industrial chemical accidents, has concluded a chain of events led to the explosion, including an employee for ink maker CAI Inc. who may have inadvertently left open a steam valve on a mixing tank of flammable chemicals.

Lettich, whose home had to be rebuilt after the blast, mentioned to Chemical Safety Board investigators Tuesday night that she had found a valve, an item she rediscovered a few days before because landscapers moved a shed on her property. She had tossed the valve under the shed after she found it.

Vorderbrueggen had testified the steam valve that touched off the blast was either destroyed or blown into the community. Pipes were everywhere after the blast, Lettich and Vorderbrueggen said.

"My understanding is there were numerous valves and pipes in the plant, so finding one (detached from the attached equipment and hard to identify) is of limited interest," said Daniel Horowitz, the Chemical Safety Board's director of public affairs, in an e-mail. Horowitz said Lettich's photos of the valve went into the investigation file.

"I am sure our pipe is not THE pipe," Lettich wrote in an e-mail "That probably is on the bottom of the river somewhere."

Vorderbrueggen said the relatively small factory had dozens of valves, but they found all the piping above the 10-foot-tall, 3,000-gallon mix tank that blew up was missing after the blast. Vorderbrueggen added that investigators searched for the valve in vain.

Even if investigators found the very valve involved, it would not have provided a definitive answer.

"If that valve went sailing through the air some distance," Vorderbrueggen said, "we would have trouble determining whether it was open or closed."