Missing safety measures led to the jet fire and seven deaths at a steel plant in Turin. Dynamics and lessons learnt

The Authors of this paper are the technical experts that were entrusted by the Public Prosecutor to conduct the technical inquiry into the accident that occurred in the ThyssenKrupp plant in Torino on December 6, 2007. The paper contains the results of the inquiry under the above mentioned point of view. The dynamics of the accident, the main causes and the consequences have been defined. This was an unusual accident from which important lessons can be learned. On December 6, a modest fire developed in the entry section of a pickling and annealing line in the TK plant in Turin. The eight workers on duty seized the firefighting equipment and started to try to extinguish the fire. The workers had portable fire extinguishers and a fire hydrant, so they had to get close to the fire to fight it. Suddenly, a violent jet fire, caused by the rupture of a hydraulic circuit, occurred. The flame instantaneously struck the eight workers while they were still fighting the fire. Seven workers suffered very serious burns, one died instantaneously while the other six had over the following month. One of the workers, who was partly protected by an operating machine, suffered only minor burns and survived. The paper contains some important lessons that have been learned from the present case, which demonstrate that the fire risk at pickling and annealing lines has generally been underestimated by the steel industry. The fire risk due to hydraulic actuators is also evident and new fire fighting strategies are suggested.