Fire department turned away... No problem, just move along.
I heard that on the local news...Eastman doesn’t like ‘unauthorized personnel’ on their property when ‘incidents’ like this crop up. Steam plumes and such are pretty much 24/7 around Eastman, but as the beginning of the raw footage shows; that is NOT a ‘steam plume. You can see flame shooting up briefly to the right at the base of two smokestacks. Hope no one was in there...
Reporting it as a “process upset” but everyone is sheltered in place and the company requests citizens in the area to do the same.
But everything is OK.
What a bunch of mixed signals when the chemical plant is about to explode!
Eastman has it’s own fire department and security. The explosion was in one of the coal gasification units that convert coal to syn gas to acetic feed stocks used to produce various plastics and polyesters.
Eastman was able to handle the emergency with it’s own forces. People at the plant and at schools were told to shelter in place.
The event was described by Eastman as a process upset that produced a loud noise and visible plume. There were no injuries.
There are memories of the 1960 Eastman explosion that shattered widow for miles around and resulted in multiple deaths.