Inside a pesticides plant with 520 employees, a 17-m³ reservoir used to treat methomyl residues in a methylisobutyl ketone (MTBK) solvent suddenly rose in pressure at 10:20 pm and exploded 15 min later, seriously damaging the production unit, ripping apart[...]
In a wooden pallet recycling plant located on the former site of a company recovering electrical transformers, a fire of unknown origin broke out at around 4 am in a 2 000 m² wood storage area. The security guard spotted[...]
2,100 tonnes of wheat and 1,000 tonnes of maize spilled over to the ground at around 1.30 following the rupture of the walls of a 14,900 m³ "sheeting pile" silo built in 1989 and comprising 6 square storage bins (4[...]
In a holding centre for ordinary industrial waste and metal waste, a 155-mm shell from World War I not fully inert and still containing between 2 and 4 kg of picric acid (melinite or 2,4,6-Trinitrophenol) exploded around 3:30 pm when[...]
In a wood processing plant, the door on an autoclave suddenly opened while its contents (wood + wood treatment product) were still pressurised at 11 bar inside. Given the door's dimensions and the pressure setting, the product spewed out of[...]
During maintenance works, a leak occurred at 2:26 pm on a joint inside a blocking station located near the connection between an ethylene pipeline serving several plants and a Y-branch supplying a plastics factory. A stationary monitoring camera recorded the[...]
While loading 31,000 m3 of bunker fuel in a ship, a leak in a refinery transfer hose resulted in a major oil spill in the Loire estuary. At 4.10 pm, a person on a barge observed the presence of hydrocarbons[...]
A natural gas leak was reported in the city center around 11:30 am on a water network. Emergency services set up a security perimeter and conduct reconnaissance , when an explosion 45 minutes later damaged several buildings. Fire reached the[...]
In a chemical plant, 11 kg of chlorine leaked around 9.30 am while being transferred in liquid phase from a tanker. The leak lasted for 30 seconds and led to the formation of a 50m cloud at the ground level[...]
On the 21 to 22/01 and 24 to 25/01 nights, the air monitoring stations continuously recorded mercury (Hg) concentrations as high as 1 micro g/m³, i.e. 1,000 times greater than the WHO threshold for chronic exposure. Laborious research involving significant human[...]
