• Eight Wyman-Gordon Workers Killed, Raising Safety Concerns

    HOUSTON -- Eight workers were killed at a Wyman-Gordon Co. forging plant when they apparently mistakenly removed the lid from a nitrogen tank that had not been depressurized.

    The accident, one of the worst in an American industrial workplace in years, occurred around midnight Sunday. It further tarnished the safety record of Wyman-Gordon, which has been repeatedly cited by Occupational Safety and Health Administration for problems at other facilities. Five other Wyman-Gordon workers have died on the job since 1972, an agency spokesman said. Until now, the Houston plant, which the North Grafton, Mass., company acquired in 1994, has not had any fatalities since it began operations in the late 1960s.

    According to workers and company executives, the accident occurred during routine maintenance to replace seals on 90-foot-tall nitrogen tanks. The pressurized tanks are used to control hydraulic systems that extrude thick-walled, seamless pipe for use in electric-generation plants. They generally require new seals every few years.

    The workers were apparently on top of a tank that was supposed to have been depressurized. When they started to loosen the top to replace the seal, the lid suddenly shot through the roof of the factory, more than 100 feet above the ground, killing the employees. "Those tanks are like champagne bottles when you loosen the top," said one worker.

    Douglas Whelan, president of the forging division, said the company thought the tanks had been depressurized, but "there was pressure still in the system that we thought wasn't there." He said the company hadn't been able to determine whether a pressure gauge had malfunctioned.

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