Hamlet chicken processing plant fire

The Hamlet chicken processing plant fire was an industrial fire

Industrial fire

An Industrial fire is a type of industrial disaster involving a conflagration which occurs in an industrial setting. Industrial fires often, but not always, occur together with explosions. They are most likely to occur in facilities where there is a lot of flammable material present. Such...

in Hamlet, North Carolina

Hamlet, North Carolina

Hamlet is a town in Richmond County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 6,018 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hamlet is located at ....

, at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant on September 3, 1991, due to a failure in a hydraulic line. Twenty-five were killed and 54 injured in the fire, trapped behind locked fire door

Fire door

A fire door is a door with a fire-resistance rating used as part of a passive fire protection system to reduce the spread of fire or smoke between compartments and to enable safe egress from a building or structure or ship...

s. In 11 years of operation, the plant had never received a safety inspection. Investigators believe a safety inspection might have prevented the disaster.

A federal

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

investigation was launched, which resulted in the owners receiving a 20-year prison sentence

Sentence (law)

In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime...

. The company received the highest fine in the history of North Carolina. As a result, the state passed several worker safety laws. Survivors and victims' families accused the fire service and city of Hamlet of racism, leading to two monuments to the tragedy being erected. The plant was never reopened.

The fire was North Carolina's worst industrial disaster. Higher fatalities occurred at the 1947 Texas City disaster

Texas City Disaster

The Texas City Disaster was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history. The incident took place on April 16, 1947, and began with a mid-morning fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp which was docked in the Port of Texas City...

, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history...

, and the 1860 Pemberton Mill

Pemberton Mill

The Pemberton Mill was a large factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which collapsed without warning on January 10, 1860 in what is likely "the worst industrial accident in Massachusetts history" and "one of the worst industrial calamities in American history"...

collapse. Some mining disasters have been worse: 53 miners died in 1925 in North Carolina in the Coal Glen mine disaster

Coal Glen mine disaster

The Coal Glen Mine Disaster was a coal mine explosion that occurred on May 27, 1925, in Coal Glen, Oakland Township, Chatham County, North Carolina, USA. It is located just north of the city of Sanford, North Carolina. Fifty three miners died. Attempts at re-opening the mine were made sporadically...

Background

The Imperial Foods building was 11 years old, although the basic structure dated back to the early 20th century. The building had been used for food processing applications and had been an ice cream

Ice cream

Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...

factory. At the time of the fire, it included adjoining structures totaling 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²). The factory was constructed with bricks and metalwork and was one story high. The interior was a "maze of large rooms separated by moveable walls", and both workers and the product moved around the interior from process to process, going from front to rear. Imperial's operators usually kept the doors of the chicken plant padlocked and the windows boarded, to prevent theft, vandalism or other criminal acts. There had been no safety inspections by the state due to a lack of inspectors. The poultry inspector visited the site daily and knew of the fire violations. One worker stated that much of the chicken meat was rotten, and that the reason it was processed into chicken nuggets was to disguise the foul taste. He did not report these violations. Some workers were made nervous by the locked doors but did not voice their concerns for fear of losing their jobs.

The company had a poor safety record, though with no previous fatal accidents. It was cited in the 1980s for safety violations at its Moosic, Pennsylvania

Moosic, Pennsylvania

Moosic is a borough in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania six miles south of Scranton and northeast of Wilkes-Barre on the Lackawanna River....

, plant. The violations included poorly marked or blocked emergency exits. The offending factory had been closed by the time of the North Carolina fire.

The Hamlet plant had had three previous fires but no action was taken to prevent recurrence or to unlock the doors. The building had had fires before Imperial took over as well, although these, too, were non-fatal. The Imperial plant at Cumming, Georgia

Cumming, Georgia

Cumming is a city in Forsyth County, Georgia, United States. The population was 5,430 at the 2010 census. However, places with a Cumming mailing address have a population of around 100,000...

, had had two major fires, one of which, in 1989, caused $1.2 million worth of damage. The Hamlet plant had no fire alarm system to warn workers farther back in the plant, and there were no sprinklers in the building.

An extensive fire was considered unlikely because of a lack of flammable materials throughout the complex, other than packing materials in the rear. There were open spaces between rooms in place of doors to allow for easy access by forklift truck

Forklift truck

A forklift is a powered industrial truck used to lift and transport materials. The modern forklift was developed in the 1920s by various companies including the transmission manufacturing company Clark and the hoist company Yale & Towne Manufacturing...

s. The only barriers were curtains of plastic strips between some to hold in refrigerated air. This allowed for rapid spread of smoke and heat in the deadly blaze. The building's previous use as an ice cream production facility meant that the walls and floor were hard, smooth surfaces, which limited the amount of material that was available to absorb heat and smoke during the fire.

Fire

There were 90 employees in the facility at the time of the fire, which began when a 25 foot (7.6 m) long deep fat fryer vat

Storage tank

A storage tank is a container, usually for holding liquids, sometimes for compressed gases . The term can be used for reservoirs , and for manufactured containers. The usage of the word tank for reservoirs is common or universal in Indian English, American English and moderately common in British...

may have spontaneously ignited

Spontaneous combustion

Spontaneous combustion is the self-ignition of a mass, for example, a pile of oily rags. Allegedly, humans can also ignite and burn without an obvious cause; this phenomenon is known as spontaneous human combustion....

at around 8:30 AM. This cooker's temperature was controlled by thermostat and was maintained at a constant 375°F (190°C), which was variable by design to 15°F (8°C) either way. The fire spread rapidly, causing a panic so that some workers suffered trauma injuries during a rush to escape. Large quantities of smoke were produced by a combination of burning soybean oil

Soybean oil

Soybean oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the seeds of the soybean . It is one of the most widely consumed cooking oils. As a drying oil, processed soybean oil is also used as a base for printing inks and oil paints...

and chicken, and melting roof insulation. The smoke was later found to be hydrocarbon

Hydrocarbon

In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....

-charged and had the potential to disable someone within a few breaths. Several gas lines embedded in the ceiling also caught fire and exploded.

The majority of those who escaped unharmed were workers in the front of the building who left through the unlocked main entrance, but most workers were trapped by a curtain of smoke. Others tried to escape through the locked doors by kicking them down, but without success; most of the survivors from the rear of the building got out through a loading bay. The bay was initially blocked by a tractor-trailer, but three workers went into the rear of the truck and pounded on the walls until they were heard by rescuers who moved the vehicle. Others escaped when several workers managed to break open a few of the doors, though for many this came too late.

The injured were sent to several hospitals for treatment for their injuries. One of the dead worked for an outside company and was resupplying the on-site vending machines; no one realized he was inside the plant until the company he worked for reported his truck missing.

Twenty-five people died and 54 suffered injuries or aftereffects such as burns, blindness, respiratory disease from smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation is the primary cause of death in victims of indoor fires.Smoke inhalation injury refers to injury due to inhalation or exposure to hot gaseous products of combustion. This can cause serious respiratory complications....

, neurological

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

and brain damage

Brain damage

"Brain damage" or "brain injury" is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors...

, and post traumatic stress disorder. Of the dead, 18 were female and 7 were male. Many still suffer or died early from their injuries, and some are addicted

Substance dependence

The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...

to their medications or to alcohol

Alcoholic beverage

An alcoholic beverage is a drink containing ethanol, commonly known as alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits. They are legally consumed in most countries, and over 100 countries have laws regulating their production, sale, and consumption...

Emergency response

Emergency response was delayed because telephones inside the building could not be used. The plant owner's son drove to the fire station and informed them there that the factory was on fire but did not say that workers were still in the plant. More than 100 medical and emergency service personnel went to the scene, some of whom ran from a local hospital, and nearby towns provided emergency evacuation for the injured via four air ambulance

Air ambulance

An air ambulance is an aircraft used for emergency medical assistance in situations where either a traditional ambulance cannot reach the scene easily or quickly enough, or the patient needs to be transported over a distance or terrain that makes air transportation the most practical transport....

s from the local hospital to nearby burns units.

The response came under heavy criticism. Fire Chief

Fire chief

Fire Chief is a top executive rank or commanding officer in a fire department, either elected or appointed...

Fuller, in charge of the emergency response, refused help several times from the Dobbins Heights fire department, five minutes away from the plant. The Dobbins Heights Fire Department was composed of African-American volunteers

Volunteer fire department

See also the Firefighter article and its respective sections regarding VFDs in other countries.A volunteer fire department is a fire department composed of volunteers who perform fire suppression and other related emergency services for a local jurisdiction.The first organized force of...

and most of the workers were also black, and there were allegations of racial prejudice from the Fire Chief. Fuller has defended his decision, saying at the time he refused assistance he did not realize the doors were locked, adding "In a fire like this you need good, seasoned people." Witnesses have also said that there were only two oxygen tanks on site to help smoke-inhalation victims.

Fuller was asked to evaluate the emergency response for investigators. He said he felt there were "more than adequate numbers of personnel and equipment given the layout of the incident site".

Reactions

It was clear that the workers had been trapped by locked fire doors, which drew much criticism. A spokesman for the company said that "certain doors" in the plant were locked at "certain times" but did not say which doors. Clark Staten of the Emergency Response and Research Institute in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

said in response to the blaze: "If the initial reports can be believed, this is an intolerable set of circumstances that should result in criminal charges being placed against those responsible for having the fire doors locked... Our past experience with fires and fire deaths shows that we must ensure an adequate number of open exits from any occupied building... It's hard to believe, in today's day and age that any business owner or manager would be so insensitive to fire safety as to allow this sort of incident to happen."

The Imperial processing facility in Cumming, Georgia, was shut down for 24 hours immediately after the fire when an inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Labor. It was created by Congress of the United States under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon, on December 29, 1970...

found an inoperative sprinkler system, "improper" fire exits and no evacuation plan. The inspection report stated that the plant posed an "imminent danger" to workers because it lacked an automatic fire extinguisher over the cooker similar to the one installed in the Hamlet plant, which failed to prevent the disaster, but did slow the ignition of oil in the vat.

Investigation

An investigation was immediately launched by state authorities, joined one month later by federal investigators. Investigators found indentations left on at least one door by people attempting to kick it down. There were concentrations of bodies around fire exits and inside a large walk-in freezer where panicked workers had sought shelter. Some sources thought they froze to death, in temperatures as low as −28 °F (−33 °C), but the official report says they were killed by smoke infiltration around the improperly closed door. Twelve deaths occurred in this area, though five people survived in the freezer, although injured. Timothy Bradly, North Carolina's Deputy Commissioner of Insurance, said that technically "There was not a single door in the plant that met the criteria of a fire exit."

The fire was caused by failure of a hydraulic line which powered a conveyor belt

Conveyor belt

A conveyor belt consists of two or more pulleys, with a continuous loop of material - the conveyor belt - that rotates about them. One or both of the pulleys are powered, moving the belt and the material on the belt forward. The powered pulley is called the drive pulley while the unpowered pulley...

supplying the cooker vat. When the original line developed a leak, a worker originally replaced it with new line and with new connections. Later the line, which was too long and created a tripping hazard, was shortened, but in the process the worker replaced the new end connector with the old fitting.

The line was rated to 3,000 psi (20,700 kPa

Pascal (unit)

The pascal is the SI derived unit of pressure, internal pressure, stress, Young's modulus and tensile strength, named after the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It is a measure of force per unit area, defined as one newton per square metre...

), while normal operating pressure never fluctuated higher than 1,500 psi (10,300 kPa). When the line with a customized connector was brought up to normal operating pressure, it separated from the connector at between 800 and 1,500 psi (5,500–10,300 kPa). Hydraulic fluid

Hydraulic fluid

Hydraulic fluids, also called hydraulic liquids, are the medium by which power is transferred in hydraulic machinery. Common hydraulic fluids are based on mineral oil or water...

spattered onto the heating lines for the cooker and immediately vaporized. This vapor then went directly into the flame of the gas-fired cooker. The vapor had a relatively low flash point

Flash point

The flash point of a volatile material is the lowest temperature at which it can vaporize to form an ignitable mixture in air. Measuring a flash point requires an ignition source...

and erupted into a fireball. The ruptured hydraulic line then pumped 50 to 55 US gallons (40–45 imp. gal/190–210 L

Litér

- External links :*...

) of hydraulic fluid into the fire before electrical failure shut it down.

A state-of-the-art automatic carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

fire extinguisher

Fire extinguisher

A fire extinguisher or extinguisher, flame entinguisher is an active fire protection device used to extinguish or control small fires, often in emergency situations...

designed to cope with such fires had been installed over the vat after a non-fatal fire in 1983 at the fire department's request. This prevented the oil itself from igniting until the later stages of the fire.

State authorities were also blamed. The state labor commissioner, John C. Brooks

John C. Brooks

John C. Brooks served as North Carolina Commissioner of Labor from 1977 to 1993. His tenure included the 1991 fire at a chicken-processing plant in Hamlet that killed 25 workers. Brooks fined the plant $808,150, which was the largest such penalty in state history, but which was criticized as...

, blamed his department's failure to inspect the plant on shortage of money and staff, and blamed the federal government for not enforcing stricter standards.

Recommendations

The final report made ten recommendations. A summary of each point is included below.

Life safety codes must be enforced. Proper enforcement of existing regulations must occur in future.
Cooking areas must be separately partitioned from other employee work areas. Cooking operations in food processing plants carry a high risk of fire, and so must be separated from the rest of the building, and from as many workers as possible.
Building exits in wet-type operations should have double emergency lighting, one positioned above the door and one low to the floor. Because the work areas were cooled to comply with food preservation laws, humidity was high, so-called "wet conditions". These conditions cause particularly heavy smoke, obscuring much high-level emergency lighting.
High-pressure equipment maintenance and repairs must be limited to factory-trained personnel and specifications. Maintenance personnel working on high-pressure machinery, such as the maintenance employee who conducted the faulty modification to the hydraulic hose in the plant, must be trained by personnel from the factory that supplied the equipment.
High-pressure equipment in probable incident areas should have built-in catastrophic shutdown valves. This would reduce the probability of accidents in high-risk areas by shutting down machinery should a fault occur.
Negative air flow
Negative pressure
Negative pressure may refer to:*negative pressure as opposed to positive pressure*stretched liquid*vacuum*negative gauge pressure, a way of expressing pressure measurements below atmospheric pressure*suction*transpirational pull...

systems in these facilities could enhance safety by being modified to also accomplish smoke evacuation. Many similar plants have this equipment, which is designed to quickly purge the air of toxic fumes in the event of accidental release of ammonia
Ammonia
Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . It is a colourless gas with a characteristic pungent odour. Ammonia contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to food and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or...

. The report recommends modifying the equipment to also pull heavy smoke away from lower areas.
State and federal inspectors from various departments should be cross-trained. Had the food inspector reported the problems he saw, the disaster may have been prevented despite the lack of other safety inspections. Such personnel should be trained to recognize major problems and to report them to the relevant authorities.
Establish a “worry free” line of communications for industry employees. Workers inside the Hamlet plant were afraid to say anything about safety conditions for fear of being fired. To overcome such problems, states should establish systems of anonymous reporting of problems by workers.
The number of OSHA safety inspectors must be increased. The team of inspectors was hugely overburdened at the time of the accident, and the report says that the number of inspectors requires increasing to solve the problem.
Emergency exit drills must be incorporated into industry policies. This would allow quick evacuation of premises like the Hamlet chicken plant.

Prosecution of the owners

Emmett J. Roe, owner of Imperial Foods Products Inc.; his son Brad, who was operations manager for the company; and plant manager James N. Hair surrendered on March 13, 1992, and were charged with non-negligent manslaughter

Manslaughter

Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...

. There was no trial. On September 15, 1992, owner Emmett Roe pleaded guilty to 25 counts of involuntary manslaughter. No one else was found guilty. Emmett Roe had personally ordered the doors to be locked from the outside. He received a prison sentence of 19 years and 11 months. The sentence was unpopular among many of the workers and their families who point out that it amounts to less than a year for each dead person. Roe became eligible for parole

Parole

Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...

in March 1994, and was released just under four years into his sentence.

Prosecution of Imperial Foods

Imperial Foods was fined $808,150 for offenses such as the locked doors and inadequate emergency light

Emergency light

An emergency light is a battery-backed lighting device that comes on automatically when a building experiences a power outage. Emergency lights are standard in new commercial and high occupancy residential buildings, such as college dormitories...

ing. The amount is smaller than potential federal

Federal law

Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join together in a federation, surrendering their individual sovereignty and many powers to the central government while...

penalties as the state administers its own safety program. The fine was still the highest in the history of North Carolina.

Aftermath

The factory was permanently closed, with the loss of 215 jobs. Within two years of the accident insurance companies and the North Carolina business lobby together introduced legislation limiting the compensation available to injured workers and relatives of killed workers. Insurance companies had originally agreed to pay $16.1 million to the injured and the families of the deceased. Some of the workers became activists as a result, to fight what they see as "bureaucratic injustice". They had originally hired John Coale, an attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

who had worked on the Bhopal disaster

Bhopal disaster

The Bhopal disaster also known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India...

, but he could not legally practice in North Carolina.

On January 9, 1992, U.S. Labor Secretary Lynn Martin

Lynn Morley Martin

Lynn Morley Martin is a businesswoman and former United States politician.-Political career:Born in Evanston, Illinois, she served as a member of the Winnebago County Board before she served in the Illinois House of Representatives, Illinois Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, where she...

told North Carolina state officials they had a deadline of 90 days to improve enforcement of job safety and health regulations or federal agencies would take over. The North Carolina General Assembly

North Carolina General Assembly

The North Carolina General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of North Carolina. The General Assembly drafts and legislates the state laws of North Carolina, also known as the General Statutes...

passed 14 new worker safety laws as a result, including provision of a system whereby workers could report violations without fear of job loss. The inspector corps was increased from 60 to 114.

Two separate monuments were erected due to a dispute. Many of the workers and their families wanted Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...

to speak in the city's memorial effort. Mayor Abbie Covington did not want Jackson involved and was backed up by many other local authority figures. One group of the survivors held their own service which included Jackson. Both services unveiled near-identical monuments, which are situated just 50 yards (46 m) from each other.

Because of the town's small size, many firefighters knew some or all of the victims, and have suffered psychological problems. More than fifty attended counseling sessions afterward.

A memorial service was held in 2000, though by then many survivors had died, mostly due to complications from their injuries. The burned-out shell of the factory was bulldozed by the state in 2001 after it was declared "a public health nuisance" due to the psychological

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

effects it had on the victims, many of whom still lived within sight of the structure.