Posted on 04/05/2017 2:18:13 AM PDT by MCF
According to St. Louis City Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson, a van-sized piece of the boiler went airborne and crashed through the roof of Faultless Healthcare Linen, located at 2030 S. Broadway.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox2now.com ...
Yikes. RIP.
Never add water to a low water condition in a hot boiler. Water expands to 1,100 times turning to steam. More explosive than gasoline.
The articles I read quoted the fire chief saying that piece that went flying was the size of a van.
I doubt they’ll be “faultless” much longer.
CC
While low water casualties are often severe when mishandled I suspect this massive failure was caused by a flare back—an explosion of UN-burned fuel that filled the firebox—probably natural gas. Annual boiler inspections by the insurance company are similar to the commercial where the bank guard announces he is a monitor for robberies not a guard.
Most likely neglected maintenance.
Relief valves tested every two months?
Low water cutoff?...
Guessing over pressure, gas or oil might have made more visible exterior building damage?
Just a guess.
Wow. Tragic.
I am disappointed in my fellow freepers. This happened two days ago and just now being posted. Yet we have seen ten plus posting of articles on two shooting incidents with the same ill informed comments.
On this article I note that it says one injured person was found under the boiler. I first assumed they meant at the box company, but after seeing the pictures I think they meant the linen company.
How does one loft a boiler 500 feet altitude and 500 downrange by explosion, and leave any remnant of a structure at the point of origin? It’s not as if there was a barrel to channel an explosion into acceleration of a projectile. One fatality, boiler engineer Kenneth Trentham, and one other injured at the Loy-Lange facility, is a low casualty list for such an explosion.
There is some speculation that a holding tank for super-heated water (330 °F ???) is at fault. BLEVE with petroleum loaded rail tank cars has resulted in debris flying in excess of hundreds of yards. Perhaps this event is a tank rupture / steam rocket incident, and not a gas explosion at fault?
How many things had to go wrong here? Operator and high limit controls, low water cut off, high pressure pop off valve. Who was operating this thing? And, yeah, when they go off, it is cataclysmic. That little water heater in your house can do the same thing if you’re stupid, but you almost have to try.
This is an explanation of the huge amount of energy that is released in a boiler explosion:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_explosion
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