Investigation into what caused the fire that left one man dead and 11 injured at a rubber-recycling plant in Vicksburg, Miss., may take months, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration official said.
The Rouse Polymerics International Inc., U.S. 61 South, production facility exploded earlier this week. Walls were blown out and flames quickly swept the building, Vicksburg Fire Chief Keith Rogers said.
The Jackson area director of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Clyde Payne, said his agency is investigating the accident, as it normally does when three or more employees are hospitalized or one dies.
“It could take several months to finish our work onsite and offsite,” he said. “We’re looking for the cause of the event to prevent such an occurrence in the future, and to ensure that there were not any violations of employee-safety regulations associated with it.”
Investigators from the city fire department and state fire marshal’s office ruled the fire an accident, Rogers said. Normally the local investigation might stop there, but in this case, the investigation would continue, he said.
Separately, the chief of emergency services of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Eric Dear, said his agency responded the night of the fire and shortly began to monitor the air and water around the plant.
Dear said his organization’s immediate goal is to ensure that the company did its part to minimize environmental damage in its handling of the emergency, which he said it did. Vicksburg (Mississippi) Post