Rescue crews continued to search for victims of an
explosion yesterday that rocked a
Middletown
,
Connecticut
,
power plant being built byKleen Energy Systems LP. Five workers
were killed and at least 12 wounded, officials said.
All workers known to be at the natural-gas-fired plant
are accounted for, said Al Santostefano, a spokesman for the Middletown Fire Department. An
investigation into what caused the blast is expected to begin at
7 a.m.
local time
today.
“We still don’t have a complete list of how many
workers were there,” Santostefano said in a telephone interview last night. “There
might have been someone that showed up that no one knew was there. That’s why
they’re continuing the search.”
Rescue workers are searching under piles of debris --
some as high as 10 feet -- and dogs have been brought in from
Massachusetts
to
assist, Santostefano said.
As many as 200 people may have been working on the
project, Middletown MayorSebastian Giulianosaid in a press conference broadcast
on the Hartford Courant’sWeb site yesterday.
“Most of the workers at the site aren’t injured,”
Giuliano said. “It’s a very large construction site with a lot of things going
on.”
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is sending a
seven-person team to probe the activities that led to the explosion, the agency
said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The blast occurred at about
11:30 a.m.
local time,
while the plant was undergoing a test of a gas line, the mayor said.
The plant, which Giuliano said is about 95 percent
completed, is in the southern part of the city, which runs along the
Connecticut River, about 16 miles (26 kilometers) south of Hartford.
Nearby homes were damaged by the explosion, which
could be felt as many as 20 miles away, CNN reported.
Energy Investors Funds
Kleen Energy Systems is majority-owned by Energy
Investors Funds Group. The group has raised more than $4 billion to invest in
more than 100 power plants in 30 states, according to the company’sWeb site, and has offices in
New
York
,
Boston
and
San Francisco
.
“Energy Investors Funds wishes to express our enormous
sympathy and concern for the workers at the Kleen Energy plant and their
families,”Alex J. Stockham, a company spokesman,
said in an e-mailed statement. “We are fully cooperating with authorities and
will provide further comment once more information becomes available.”
Purchase Agreement
The plant is a 620-megawatt facility being built to
feed electricity toNortheast Utilities’ Connecticut Light
& Power under a 15-year power purchase agreement, according to a report by
Fitch Ratings on Nov. 20.
Houston-basedSpectra Energy Corp.’s Algonquin Gas
Transmission Co. is the gas supplier to the plant, Fitch said.
Gordon Holk, the power plant’s general manager, didn’t
respond to a voicemail message left by Bloomberg News.
This is the first incident recorded at the Kleen
Energy plant, Santostefano said.
“They have an exemplary record,” he said. “There’s
been nothing and then this happened.”
(from
Bloomberg)