Two dates that have become important to the residents of Kingsport are Oct. 4, 1960, and Oct. 4, 2017. These are the dates of the explosions at Eastman Chemical Company.
The explosion in 1960 took a high toll on the community. Sixteen people died and over 400 were injured.
The recent explosion was on a smaller scale. A coal gasification chamber blew and caused a lot of damage. There were no injuries.
According to a news report from the Kingsport Times-News, an employee said that the gasifier fumes were everything bad that’s extracted from coal, and when it blew up all of that went into the air, causing the black smokestacks that could be seen in the area.
According to Eastman Chemical Co., coal gasification is the technology of choice for converting coal to clean and efficient power, chemicals, fertilizers and fuels.
Two years ago Pete Lodal, technical fellow and group leader of the Plant Protection Technical Services, gave a lecture in the Kingsport area about the explosion in 1960. He mentioned how on his first day working at Eastman in 1977 they fingerprinted him, because that was the only way to identify someone after an accident, a lesson learned from the previous explosion.
The 1960 explosion could have been a lot worse. It happened due to pressure in the Aniline chamber. Aniline is a chemical compound that Eastman uses for dye. The fire and explosions were really close to hitting the hydrogen tanks and could have been significantly more damaging had they been affected.
Since the 2017 explosion occurred on the 57th anniversary of the first, it caused a lot of families to remember their lost loved ones from that 1960 accident as well as people who are working there currently to take even greater caution in their work.
Eastman recently posted a statement saying, “The operations of the company has mostly returned to normal except the coal gasification chambers.”
