Fire That Critically Burned 2 Was Preventable, Unionist Says

A fire that critically burned two workers Monday night at the city’s troubled project to turn sewage into energy occurred because the machine they were working on had not cooled down enough, according to a union representative who toured the plant Tuesday.

Richard Couch, a representative of Pipefitters Local 250, said officials at the Hyperion Treatment Plant south of Los Angeles International Airport told him that a supervisor failed to check the temperature of the machine that spat the fireball that engulfed two workers and burned about a third of each man’s body.

“The accident probably could have been prevented,” Couch said. “I would say it’s negligence. It sounds like they (the supervisors) didn’t pay attention.”

Department of Sanitation spokeswomen said they did not have enough information to respond to Couch’s account.

Don Berg and James Cook were removing a plate on a hydro-extractor, a prototype machine that dries sewage before it can be burned for energy, when the volatile mixture exploded about 6:15 p.m. Monday. It took firefighters three hours to put out the blaze; the building suffered little damage.

Both men, who work for private contractors, were listed in critical but stable condition at Torrance Memorial Hospital.

Berg, 59, of Norwalk suffered second- and third-degree burns on 30% of his body and Cook, 32, of Garden Grove was burned on 40% of his body, a hospital spokeswoman said. Both men were burned mostly on the face, hands and arms, she said.

The Hyperion Energy Recovery System, a $400-million project to turn sludge into energy, is two years behind schedule and costing more than three times the original estimate. In February, 1987, another fire in a different part of the plant took a week to extinguish; although no one was injured, the accident prompted numerous design modifications.

The project, which is still in the testing stages, has been shut down pending an investigation.

Couch said that city officials told him when he toured the area that a supervisor signed a work permit for two contractors to open the extractor. The temperature, Couch said, was 50 degrees hotter than the 140 degrees it should have been when the men began work.

A report given to Mayor Tom Bradley by the Department of Public Works noted that the temperature was 195 degrees at 2 p.m., when the unit was shut down for repair; there is no mention of what the temperature was four hours later when the men went to work.

The report said the accident took place when the men were changing a faulty part and a “sudden onrush of fresh air into the hydro-extractor caused spontaneous combustion.”

Bradley asked that a report of an investigation of “operational and safety procedures” be presented to him by Friday. The preliminary report said that deadline could not be met.

Calling the project “jinxed,” Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a frequent critic of the Hyperion Energy Recovery System, said: “It should have been evident . . . that there’s a problem. It doesn’t work. After hundreds of millions of dollars, not only doesn’t it work but it’s a safety hazard.”

Tom Lebo, project supervisor for Kiewit Pacific, which employed Cook, said that although the city has been responsive to safety concerns in the past, “I think there’s room for improvement.”

Lebo attributed the project’s troubled history to its experimental nature.

“It’s a new design,” he said. “To be the first you pay a premium.”