One man was reported to be in urgent condition Saturday night from injuries suffered when a lithium battery exploded at a plant in Conroe’s industrial park.
Conroe Assistant Fire Chief Paul Sims said firefighters were dispatched to 750 Conroe Park North Drive – located between Pollock Drive and TxDOT Road – around 6:30 p.m. They found one man outside the building and another still inside.
Both men were transported to nearby hospitals.
The man found outside the building was in stable condition, while the other man had burns and lacerations, Sims said.
While Sims said there was no indication what caused the explosion, one of the lithium batteries was located at one end of a pipe.
Sims said vinyl chloride was present in the building, a chemical that becomes “deadly” when in contact with water.
“The explosion cut a hole in the ceiling, which ruptured a water line,” he said.
Conroe’s HazMat unit was dispatched to the scene, and the Conroe Police Department cordoned off an area around the plant to control any traffic.

Supermarkets in the southwestern Chinese city of Mianyang were facing shortages of bottled water Wednesday amid panic buying after water supply from a river was contaminated by waste from a manganese plant.

Government fire trucks were also delivering water to communities after local authorities learned that heavy rains washed waste into the Fujiang River from the Xichuan Minjiang Electrolytic Manganese Plant in the county of Songpan.
The river accounts for 70 percent of the drinking water supply of Mianyang communities.
Tests of water samples from the river showed there is 1.888 milligrams of manganese per liter and 3.349 milligrams of ammonia and nitrogen per liter. The safe level is 0.1 and 0.5 milligrams, respectively.

A GAS cloud sparked by a chemical spill at a factory in west Suffolk was caused by firefighters treating the substance with water, it has emerged.

Residents in Haverhill were told to keep their windows and doors closed after a tanker delivering aluminium chloride to International Flavours and Fragrances (IFF) in the town, spilt its contents at about 12.40pm today.

About 240 staff at the firm’s factory on Duddery Hill were evacuated when half a ton of the chemical spilled from the delivery truck onto the floor.

Aluminium chloride is a white powder which can cause irritation to the eyes, skin and the respiratory system if breathed or touched.

Group manager John Wilcock said fire crews from Haverhill, Bury St Edmunds and Ixworth, wearing chemical protection suits and specialist breathing equipment, were called to the incident about 12.49pm.

The crews then poured a bucket of water onto a shovelful of the chemical to test the reaction.

“We tried to treat it with a bucket of water which sent a big gas cloud across the town which quickly dispersed,” Mr Wilcock said.

Four months have passed since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated the east coast of Japan. And while rebuilding is now under way, progress at the local level is slow and impeding the recovery of universities in the disaster-stricken area. 

According to estimates by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the total damage to universities could exceed ¥90 billion, although it is highly likely that this figure will rise as reconstruction continues. 

Tohoku University, one of the world's top engineering universities, arguably suffered the most damage. Property damage to the university is estimated at over ¥77 billion (£596 million) in total, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo Tsushin. Around 7000 pieces of lab equipment were destroyed and 28 buildings will need to be rebuilt. 



A severely damaged building on the Aobayama-campus at Tohoku University

© Tohoku University
The Aobayama-campus was among the most seriously damaged. A fire swept through the chemistry department, fuelled by lab chemicals. On top of this, efforts to douse the fire caused serious water damage to the building and electrics. The building was declared off-limits, and the laboratory work was moved to other buildings as research groups were unable to function. However, restoration of the laboratories is proceeding apace and is almost completed, with researchers expected to be able to move back in shortly. 

Tadahiro Komeda, a professor of nanotechnology at Tohoku University, estimates that it will take more than a year for research to get back to the stage it was at before the earthquake struck, even in the Katahira-campus which suffered relatively little damage. 

NAGPUR: An ex-student of Sindhu College and his sister had a lucky escape after a wall collapsed seconds after they moved away from the spot. Sunil Tiwari had gone for his younger sister's admission at Sindhu College at Kaka Tilokchand Marg, Pachpaoli.

The incident happened on Monday morning after Tiwari had parked his bike. The siblings had walked barely a few steps away when a wall on the first floor of the chemistry lab building collapsed.

"The cracking sound alerted us and we turned back to see an eight-feet piece of wall falling on a car and my bike," said Sunil. "We were shocked. If it had happened a few seconds earlier we would have been buried under the debris," he added.

Sunil said that though his bike was not damaged much, the car belonging to a lecturer was completely damaged. He said that despite taking high fees from students, the college management is not providing basic facilities to students.

He said the wall collapse could have injured many students, since this is the place where students queued up to buy prospectus. "Fortunately, today the counter was closed," Sunil said.

Principal B Nag said it was just an accident and college authorities were not responsible for it. "The chemistry lab building is old and since the water tank is on the same floor, the place was moist and hence the wall collapsed partly," he said. He denied Sunil's allegations, claiming that the wall collapsed over the parking lot.

A Boston College chemistry student was injured when a beaker exploded during an experiment this morning, cutting her face and forcing the evacuation of Merkert Chemistry Center, officials said.

The student was working alone in the lab with a small amount of thionyl chloride -- a substance commonly used in organic chemistry experiments -- when it reacted violently, according to fire department spokesman Steve MacDonald.

The student, Hee Yeon Cho, received cuts on her face and minor burns on her hands, he said.

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said Cho, who recently finished her fourth year in the doctoral program, subsequently left the lab to take care of the cuts while fellow graduate students notified Boston College police. The university then notified the Boston fire department.

“This was a minor chemical reaction that caused the beaker she was using to break,” Dunn said.

Fire crews and a hazmat team responded to a call at 10:47 a.m., but cleared the scene by 1 p.m., MacDonald said. Throughout the early afternoon, some responders’ vehicles remained at the lab at 2609 Beacon St. in Brighton, but people were allowed in and out of the building.

After going through a series of showers in a mobile decontamination unit, Cho was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, where she was treated for injuries that do not appear life-threatening, MacDonald said. No one else was injured, Dunn said.

After the beaker ruptured, Cho put a paper towel over the cut on her cheek and then drove herself home, said Chris Schuster, 25, a graduate chemistry student at the scene.

Her return home complicated the cleanup effort: Crews also had to decontaminate her car and her apartment in Brighton, MacDonald said.

“It was more challenging because the student left,” he said.

A chemistry professor came to the lab and determined responders should dilute the thionyl chloride with “large amounts of water,” MacDonald said, and Boston College brought in a cleaning company.

It is still unclear what caused the reaction, he said.

Thionyl chloride reacts strongly with moisture and can be dangerous to humans if vapors are inhaled, said Lawrence Scott, Cho’s professor. The chemical can be used to make mustard gas and nerve toxins.

“Honestly, I think she was probably never expecting this to happen. This seems like a somewhat standard procedure,” Schuster said regarding the experiment.

Schuster said chemistry students at Boston College are required to take a lab safety training course. While it is uncommon for students to work alone, the department’s guidelines for lab safety do not forbid it, according to a document posted online by the Boston College Office of Environmental Health and Safety.

Still, researchers are warned not to work with hazardous or potentially explosive compounds by themselves, said Kai Hong, 26, another chemistry graduate student who was going to the building this afternoon.

Dunn said that to his knowledge, Cho, whom he called a “skilled researcher,” did not violate any safety procedures.

The explosion had such violent force it blew three-foot chunks of steel more than 100 yards.

But though cars were damaged and plaster fell from the ceiling of nearby buildings, nobody was hurt in the massive underground explosion in the Deep Tunnel flood protection system in south suburban South Holland Tuesday morning, officials said.

A build up of methane gas from sewage deposited in the tunnel during recent floods — perhaps ignited by an electric compressor used to measure the depth of flood waters — is suspected of causing the blast, according to a source familiar with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s investigation of the accident.

A reported chemical spill in Malott Hall on the KU campus turned out to be just water.
Emergency crews and a Hazmat unit were dispatched to the scene, 1251 Wescoe Hall Drive, after reports of the spill came in just before 2 a.m. Thursday.
An individual inside the building had reported a chemical with an odor was leaking from a container onto the floor. The building was evacuated about 2:01 a.m.
Crews searched the seven-story building and discovered the spill on the fifth floor.
KU Police Sgt. Gary Wieden said the liquid that had collected on the floor turned out to be water that had accumulated under a chemical container.

fire department hazardous materials team that was sent out to the western edge of Golden Gate Park this morning on a report of a suspicious leak didn't find any dangerous chemicals, a department spokeswoman said.
Just after 10 a.m., the department responded to a report of an unknown liquid leaking out of a 55-gallon drum near the Golden Gate Stables, located at 36th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said.
The liquid turned out to be water.
10:29 AM: A fire department hazardous materials team has been sent to the western edge of Golden Gate Park this morning, a department spokeswoman said.
The department received a report just after 10 a.m. that contractors had discovered an unknown liquid leaking from a 55-gallon drum near the Golden Gate Stables at 36th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said.
She did not yet have additional details on the situation.