WOODWARD — Two people were injured in a red phosphorous chemical fire at the Deepwater Chemicals plant west of Woodward Tuesday morning.

Woodward Emergency Management Director Matt Lehenbauer said an employee of the iodine derivative production plant was injured when the fire ignited.

The employee was “operating the processing machine where the fire first started,” Lehenbauer said. The worker was taken to Woodward Regional Hospital, where he was treated for minor burns and inhalation and released.

“That was what was reported to us from the safety manager at the plant,” Lehenbauer said.

The company issued a press release stating, “There were minor injuries to one individual who was treated at Woodward Hospital and released.”

The second person injured during the fire was one of the responding firefighters, who was treated and released for heat exhaustion, said Woodward Fire Marshal Todd Finley.

The Deepwater press release noted the fire “occurred during the startup of a separate newly constructed facility at the Deepwater Chemicals plant,” which is located near West Woodward Airport along Airpark Road.

Both Finley and Lehenbauer said the fire started shortly before 9 a.m. as a worker was mixing or preparing to mix some of the red phosphorus chemical, which both said is unstable and highly flammable.

“Friction from the product itself caused it to auto-ignite,” Finley said.

He said once red phosphorous is ignited, “there isn’t a real big flame, but it burns very hot and it’s hard to control.”

However, thanks to the help of on-site personnel he described as experts, Finley said area firefighters were able to work out a plan of attack to bring the fire quickly under control.

“Whenever we deal with chemical companies, whether it’s Deepwater or Terra or whoever, they have trained professionals on site. We do have hazardous material technicians, but their experts are specialists, so we basically go in and assist them,” he said.

As the firefighters assisted on-site personnel to attack Tuesday’s fire, Finley said the goal “was to smother the product.”

“We want to create a barrier of water to keep oxygen out of it, because it needs oxygen to burn,” he said.

Firefighters used a combination of foam and straight water to blanket the product, Finley said, noting although the foam was used to initially extinguish the fire, water was used to saturate the dry chemical and make it more stable.

He said the phosphorus was “mainly contained to the vessels that it came in.”

Firefighters from Woodward, Sharon, Mooreland and Fargo responded to the fire, along with emergency managers from Woodward, Ellis and Harper counties. Working together they had the fire extinguished by 10:30 a.m.

“Once the fire was out we had people watching it, be-cause the product is so unstable, just in case it flared up again,” Finley said.

Extinguishing the fire was only half of the solution.

“The after-effects are cleaning everything up,” Lehenbauer said.

“We advised the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality of the incident,” he said, noting “anytime we have any type of incident that could impact the environment, whether it’s groundwater, air or soil, we contact them to make sure we’re following the right protocols and procedures for cleanup.”

As part of the clean-up procedures, Finley said firefighters used “high pressure water to wash down areas where the product might have spilled on and keep out of areas where it might auto-ignite again.”

Lehenbauer said workers with Deepwater utilized their own in-house cleanup program “where even the water we used to extinguish the fire is cleaned up and disposed of properly so there is no environmental issues to groundwater or anything.”

Finley and Lehenbauer said property damage was essentially limited to loss of product, noting about 500 pounds of the chemical were burned.

In its press release, Deepwater Chemicals said “emergency personnel who responded to the fire ... were responsible for the property loss being minimal.”

“Plant personnel and area emergency personnel responded immediately and contained the fire to the new facility,” the press release states, adding “operations at the rest of the plant were not affected.”

However, operations at some nearby businesses  briefly were interrupted as four businesses north of the fire were evacuated for about two hours until a strong southwest wind was able to disperse the smoke, according to Lehenbauer.



Ricks writes for the Woodward News.