Accidental deaths reported at steel plants and mines

An explosion and fire at a US Steel plant in Ecorse, Michigan, has injured two and killed one worker.

US Steel claims the explosion happened in the plant’s steel shop and that the dead man was remote control locomotive operator Antonino Palazzolo, who was 32 years old.

Steelmaking at the plant was halted and the nature of the explosion is being investigated.

Meanwhile in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, two construction workers were found dead at the company’s Finex steel mill.

At the time of going to press the cause of the deaths was unknown, but a POSCO spokeswoman told the Korean Times that there are two possible reasons: they fell to their deaths or died after inhaling toxic gas leaking from an adjacent nitrogen tank.

Last month, claims the Korean Times, a worker at Hyundai Steel’s Dangjin plant in South Chungcheong Province was killed after inhaling toxic gas leaking from a power plant. Hyundai Steel is South Korea’s second largest steelmaker.

And finally, Henry Michael Fayiah, a former Mittal Steel geologist, died on 12 December while on duty at ArcelorMittal’s Yekepa mine.

According to the world’s largest steelmaker, the incident occurred when Fayiah was taking a sample of iron ore from the base of a stockpile when a ‘sliding accident’ occurred.

Fayiah, an ArcelorMittal Liberia employee, was the mine’s first fatality.