PORT ALLEN, LA (WAFB) -
One person was injured, families were evacuated and US 190 is shut down at Bueche Road between Port Allen and Erwinville due to a chemical fire.

Acetylene Fact Sheet
Acetylene is a colorless and odorless gas. Commercial grade Acetylene may have an Ether-like or garlic-like odor. It is used for welding, cutting, brazing and soldering, and in making other chemicals. Click here for more information.

The Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) has activated its Crisis Action Team (CAT) because of the fire at the Air Liquide facility.

The fire is at the Air Liquide Specialty Gases plant. It happened around 10:30 a.m. Emergency officials, along with DEQ and a hazardous material team are on the scene to control the fire.

Late Monday afternoon, firemen, company officials and State Police technicians were able to enter the hot zone in order to inspect several cylinders, which were not damaged by the fire.  Several hundred tanks were still on fire.  State Police Air Support assisted technicians in inspecting the fire from the air before crews could enter the site.

One person was taken to the hospital with injuries to their eyes. That person's identity has not yet been released. The West Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office says two tanks of acetylene exploded, however, the public relations office for Air Liquide in Houston says the tanks were empty and waiting to be filled with acetylene.

NEW CUMBERLAND - The small home at a rural crossroads in central Hancock County is where James Stanley lived and worked for many years. On Thursday, it's where he met a tragic death.

Stanley, who was in his 60s, was working on a project in his driveway with an acetylene torch Thursday afternoon when he was killed by an explosion, officials say.

"It was a bad accident - just one of those freak things that you don't see very often," Hancock County Sheriff Mike White said. "Very unfortunate."

The likely cause of death was trauma and burns from the explosion, according to the sheriff, but officials are still awaiting a ruling from the state medical examiner's office.

White said he knew Stanley as a retired man who still did work on the side with excavating equipment. Several small bulldozers and backhoes sit on his property at the remote intersection of Ballantyne and Shady Glen roads. A lone pine tree stands in his front yard.

Burn marks from the fire that claimed his life can be seen on the ground outside his garage. Police tape no longer surrounds the property, but the state fire marshal's office is continuing its investigation.

"We're not sure exactly what he was doing (with the torch)," White said. "He was cutting something."

Either flames or sparks from the torch ignited a 55-gallon drum that Stanley was standing over while he was working, White said. The drum was sealed and empty, but investigators are conducting tests to see whether vapors were the ignition source.

An explosion at a South Seattle gas processing facility Monday afternoon caused a lot of noise and little else.

Just before 1:30 p.m., Seattle firefighters were called to the Airgas facility at 7700 14th Avenue South following an explosion there.

Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore said the explosion occurred at an acetylene handing facility inside a room built to contain explosions. Six employees inside the building were uninjured.

Firefighters cleared a larger area around the facility following the explosion while they checked for gas leaks. The explosion damaged nearby windows and the building itself, but no injuries were reported.

NORWALK -- Every on-duty firefighter in Norwalk fought to prevent a Wednesday afternoon blaze in a building at LaJoie's Scrap and Recycling from igniting thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and exploding containers of accelerants.

Deputy Fire Chief Ed Prescott said the fire tore through the 60-foot-by-60-foot, two-story sheet metal building that houses the mid-20th century, 20-cylinder diesel locomotive engine that powers a car shredder. The building contained about 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel as well as containers of acetylene and oxygen, fire officials said.

"Our main concern was that a lot of acetylene tanks and oxygen tanks were compromised and were fueling the fire," he said. "Our guys worked really hard to contain it to where it was and to make sure there was external explosions."

A Tuesday evening fire in a storage unit at the corner of Washburn Way and Joe Wright Road caused property damage but no injuries.
A person was using an acetylene cutting torch to disassemble an old pickup truck for scrap metal, said Fire Marshal Scott Rice with Klamath County Fire District No. 1.
“The person inadvertently hit the brake line, which was still full of fluid,” Rice said. “Brake fluid is very volatile and there was no extinguisher on hand.”
The fire spread rapidly, and Rice said it essentially was allowed to “free burn” until the fire department arrived.
“The fire destroyed the unit it started in,” Rice said. “The units to each side had water damage, but no fire damage.”

An explosion caused a chemical plant in southwest China's Chongqing municipality to catch fire early on Friday morning, local authorities have said.

No casualties have been reported so far after the acetylene-burning blast happened at 3:30 a.m. at a workshop of Fangxin Fine Chemical Co. Ltd. in Jiangbei district, said a spokesman with the district government.

The fire has been controlled, and the cause of the accident is being investigated.

Two people have been injured in a explosion at an gas bottling plant on the outskirts of Cork city this morning.

The explosion happened at the Irish Oxygen plant at Waterfall around 11.20am when it's understood an acetylene cylinder exploded.

Five units of Cork City and Ballincollig Fire Brigade and four HSE ambulances, as well as three other HSE emergency vehicles including an advanced paramedic also responded to the accident.

Fire broke out this morning at the Hartz Mountain processing plant when a highly flammable oxy-acetylene torch exploded near eight gas-filled cylinders and live gas line, said Deputy Chief John Gehringer of the Bloomfield Fire Department. 

Though the torch and hose ignited instantly, Bloomfield firefighters, arriving within two minutes to the scene at Bloomfield and Watsessing Avenues, were able to contain the fire and extinguish it.  The county Hazmat team from Nutley also arrived quickly, said Gehringer.  No injuries were reported.

"One of the oxy-acetylene torches [workers] were using ignited," he said.  "One of the hoses had a rupture in it.  It caused gas to escape."

Used at the processing plant to cut through metal, the oxy-acetylene cylinders are filled with a combination of oxygen and a hydrocarbon fuel called acetylene.  There were eight of them in the room at the time of the explosion.

FRANKLIN — It’s back to business as usual for five companies evacuated Monday morning following a leaking tank of Acetylene gas at Nation Coating Systems.
Around 11:11 a.m. Monday, Franklin fire officials and one member from the Greater Cincinnati Hazardous Materials team responded to the company at 501 Shotwell Drive for a leaking tank full of Acetylene — a fuel used for welding, said Capt. Tony Abston said.
Nation Coating Systems is a supplier of thermal spray coaling for industrial application, according to its website.
Abston said about 50 employees were evacuated from various businesses in the industrial park — Nation Coating Systems, M&S Flooring, Caring Partners International, Waytek, Inc. and Olivamed. The workers were relocated to a vacant building nearby until about 1:30 p.m.
Abston said employees of NCS were attempting to unscrew the tank’s lid with a wrench when the liquid started spewing out.
“It’s very explosive,” Abston said. “(Acetylene) chemical is heavier than air and it dissipated.”
Power to the building was shut off by 11:30 a.m. before any officials entered it, Abston said. He added the tank was moved outside and the building’s doors left open to ventilate. No one was injured.

QUILCENE — A fire destroyed a maintenance building containing diesel and propane at Penny Creek Quarry about two miles south of Quilcene this afternoon.

No one was injured in the blaze at the quarry on Penny Creek Road off state Highway 104, said Quilcene Fire Department Chief Robert ‘Mo' Moser.

The 40-foot-by-60-foot wooden shed was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived after receiving a 9-1-1 emergency call at 12:47 p.m., said Moser, whose district was the lead agency fighting the fire.

There were no injuries, said Bill Beezley, spokesman for East Jefferson Fire Rescue, which assisted Quilcene along with Brinnon and Discovery Bay fire departments and Port Ludlow Fire and Rescue.

An investigation into the cause of the fire will begin Wednesday, said Moser, who planned to keep a crew at the site tonight to guard it from interference and watch for flare-ups.

The building contained a 2,000 gallon diesel tank, acetylene tanks and propane tanks.

“We had a couple of small explosions but nothing big,” Moser said.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Firefighters encountered flames shooting 50 feet in the air Tuesday night, as chemicals fueled the fire at a storage building on the city’s south side.

Multiple 911 calls sent Indianapolis Fire Department to a fire 1t 3331 Arbor St. at about 7:50 p.m. Tuesday. Firefighters took a defensive tack due to the volume of fire, the potential for collapse and the observed presence of flammable chemicals, which turned out to be a ruptured acetylene tank.

The owner of the building, Troy Hughes, and his son were both inside the building when the fire started, but the cause was undetermined. Neither of them was injured, IFD said.

Fire engines and a HAZMAT team remain at the scene of a fire near Newcastle where nearby residents were evacuated after a large acetylene cylinder started leaking during an industrial blaze.

The fire at Heatherbrae early on Friday was initially thought to be in a domestic garage but was in fact industrial, containing tyres and the cylinder, a spokesman for Fire and Rescue NSW said.

Ten nearby residents have been evacuated and products from the fire are affecting a nearby creek, he said.

'HAZMAT from Newcastle are at the scene and will ascertain the effect on the local catchment area.'

Fire engines and a HAZMAT team remain at the scene of a fire near Newcastle where nearby residents were evacuated after a large acetylene cylinder started leaking during an industrial blaze.

he fire at Heatherbrae early on Friday was initially thought to be in a domestic garage but was in fact industrial, containing tyres and the cylinder, a spokesman for Fire and Rescue NSW said.

en nearby residents have been evacuated and products from the fire are affecting a nearby creek, he said.

HAZMAT from Newcastle are at the scene and will ascertain the effect on the local catchment area."

A large fire has broken out at an industrial estate.
Almost 50 firefighters worked throughout yesterday afternoon tackling the blaze in Biggar Road Industrial Estate in Cleland, North Lanarkshire.

They had set up a precautionary 200 metre exclusion zone around the area when they came across cylinders of acetylene, a gas used as a fuel and a chemical building block. The safety zone was later removed.

Strathclyde Fire and Rescue said the fire was in a large industrial unit. No one was injured in the blaze.

Incident commander Gary Wallace said: "This has been a major blaze in a large industrial unit. Additional worries for us has been the 3 acetylene cylinders on site, the roof, which has been confirmed as asbestos, and a 1,000 litre diesel tank. These additional issues required residents to be evacuated from nearby homes. That exclusion zone has now been lifted and residents have been escorted back to their homes."

Firefighters had to evacuate homes in northeast Charlotte because of a hazardous materials situation this afternoon.

No one had been reported injured in connection with the incident, which involved a damaged acetylene tank in the 6700 block of Terry Lane. That's near East W.T. Harris Boulevard and Robinson Church Road.

It took firefighters about an hour and 40 minutes to stabilize the damaged tank. It's unclear who owns the tank, but acetylene is a gas commonly used to fuel cutting torches.

VICTORVILLE • Authorities evacuated some areas of Victor Valley College Monday morning after leaking gas from the welding class was discovered, San Bernardino County Fire officials said.

Several engines and a hazardous materials unit were called out at about 10:30 a.m., Capt. Tracy Carlton said.

The fire department stood by as the leaking acetylene cylinder was allowed to vent off, Carlton said. Depending on what a chemical may be, the best procedure may be to allow the chemical to vent safely into the atmosphere while monitoring it and keeping everyone else away from the location.

No one was hurt in the incident and the normal class schedule resumed after about two hours, officials said.

DOZENS of residents in a West Lothian village were evacuated from their homes at the weekend due to a chemical fire.
Firefighters attending the blaze, which began inside a garage in Bellsmill Terrace, Winchburgh, on Saturday night, discovered explosive acetylene gas cylinders in the building.
They decided that the canisters posed a risk to the public and asked local people to leave their homes and go to the village’s community centre.
And now fire crews have thanked the villagers for their co-operation.