Five die, 12 hurt in power plant blast

AT LEAST five people died in a power plant explosion in the US state of Connecticut yesterday.

People living up to 50km away reported that their homes were shaken by the blast at the Kleen Energy plant, being built outside the town of Middletown.

Workers were purging natural gas lines when a powerful explosion blew off part of the building under construction, officials said.

Black smoke could be seen pouring out of the site shortly afterwards.

Al Santostefano, the deputy fire marshal in Middletown, said 50 construction workers were in the section of the power plant where the explosion happened at 11.17am local time.

He told reporters he did not know what caused the explosion.

Dogs were searching for victims in the rubble, but there were no signs of life yesterday afternoon, he said.

“They are taking the building apart piece-by -piece now; the part that collapsed and came in, they are taking that apart in sections piece-by-piece, very carefully,” he said.

Santostefano said there were at least 100 firefighters on the scene and it had taken them an hour to contain the fire caused by the blast.

Brian Albert, spokesman for Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, says 11 people were brought in.

Two were treated and released and eight were being treated for broken bones, abdominal injuries, blunt-force trauma and similar injuries.

Albert said a seriously injured person was transferred to Hartford Hospital and another may be sent there.

The powerful blast shook houses for miles around.

“I felt the house shake; I thought a tree fell on the house,” said Middletown resident Steve Clark.

Barrett Robbins-Pianka, who lives about a mile away and has monitored the project for years, said she was running outside and heard what she called “a tremendous boom”.

“I thought it might be some test or something, but it was really loud – a definite explosion,” she said.

Governor M Jodi Rell visited the site yesterday after speaking with Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano and called out a specialised search and rescue team to help firefighters.

The state’s Emergency Operations Centre in Hartford was also activated and the Department of Public Health was called to provide tents at the scene for shelter and medical triage.

The 620MW plant, to the south of Middletown on the Connecticut river, was due to open in the summer.

Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on the plant in February 2008.

In February 2009, an explosion at a We Energies power plant near Milwaukee burned six workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still investigating.

An explosion at a Dominion Virginia Power plant in Massachusetts killed three workers in November 2007, while one worker and nine others were injured at an American Electric Power plant in Beverly, Ohio in January 2007.