Two dead and 19 hurt after chemical spill at West Virginia plant

Two people have died and 19 others were hospitalized after a chemical spill occurred at a West Virginia plant, authorities said.

The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant, a silver recovery business in Institute, around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, as workers were preparing to shut down the facility, officials in Kanawah County said.

Cleaning and decontamination activities were underway in preparation to shut down the site when a chemical gas reaction involving nitric acid and another substance, M2000A, occurred, creating hydrogen sulphide, which is a highly toxic gas.

It caused “a violent reaction of chemicals, and it instantaneously overreacted,” Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said.

Sigman later noted that the “two most dangerous times of a chemical plant’s life is start-up and shut down.”

As first responders arrived at the scene just before 10 a.m., a shelter-in-place was ordered for a one-mile radius around the site. An emergency alert program then notified nearby residents and businesses of the leak, officials said.

Route 25 in front of the plant was shut down, while the nearby Route 60 was also momentarily shut down. Nearby schools sheltered in place out of an abundance of caution. However, all shelter-in-place orders were lifted about five hours later.

Twenty-one people were taken to the hospital, including the two who died. Among the injured were seven ambulance workers who were responding to the leak. Officials said they were not going to release the names of the people who died or were taken to the hospital for treatment.

The leak required a large scale decontamination operation, which required people to remove all their clothes and be sprayed down, authorities said.

Catalyst Refiners is a small, warehouse-sized facility that works to remove silver from what remains of chemical processes. The company can find thousands of dollars worth of silver just by vacuuming the floors in a plant’s offices, Sigmon said.

Several employees at the site at the time of the leak declined to go to the hospital to be checked out after, Sigman said, adding, “We can’t make them go.”

Ames Goldsmith Corp., which owns Catalyst Refiners, said in a statement: “This is an unfathomably difficult time. Our thoughts and prayers are with our colleagues and their families.”

The company promised to work with local, state and federal officials as they investigate.