EXPLOSION HITS WATER SUPPLIER: WELDER HURT, FLOW UNAFFECTED WHEN GAS BLAST RIPS PLANT ROOF.Byline: Bhavna Mistry Daily News Staff Writer An explosion Thursday tore open the roof of the Palmdale Water District treatment plant and burned a worker who had been installing a chlorine-generation system, expected to be safer than storing tanks of chlorine gas. An accumulation of hydrogen gas blew up while the worker was using a welding torch to install a vent for a bleaching-agent tank, causing first-degree and second-degree burns second-degree burn n. A burn that blisters the skin and is more severe than a first-degree burn. second-degree burn See Burn. on the man's arms and cutting his face, firefighters said. ``He's pretty lucky to be alive,'' said Capt. Ted Lindaman of the Los Angeles County Fire Department Not to be confused with Los Angeles Fire Department. The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD), serves unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, as well as 58 cities and towns that choose to have the county provide fire and EMS services, including the City of La . The 30-year-old man, whose name was not released, was taken to Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley Hospital. Sheriff's deputies shut down Avenue S and Sierra Highway Sierra Highway is a road in Southern California, United States. It runs from Tunnel Station near the north limit of the City of Los Angeles, where it intersects with San Fernando Road and Foothill Boulevard, as well as Interstate 5, and continues north to Mojave, mostly paralleling for fear of a leak of poisonous chlorine, which is used in the purification process, but traffic was allowed to resume 90 minutes later. Water officials shut down the plant after the explosion, which occurred shortly after 3 p.m., but said they expected to have it running again by today. They said customers would not be affected. The new system was being installed to generate chlorine from salt, so the district could stop ordering and storing supplies of chlorine gas. The system was being installed in an area formerly used for storage. Workers from ChlorTec of Campbell were finishing up the installation and testing the system when the explosion occurred, Palmdale Water District General Manager Dennis LaMoreaux said. The explosion blew off part of the roof in the rear of the plant, leaving support beams exposed. ``It was a pretty good blast,'' Lindaman said. The new chlorine-generation system was supposed to be operational next week. The explosion will cause delays, LaMoreaux said, but he did not yet know by how long. Meanwhile, the district will continue to rely on chlorine deliveries, he said. The treatment plant was built in the late 1980s and enlarged in 1993, allowing Palmdale Water District to use more water from the California Aqueduct The California Aqueduct is a 444 mile (715 km)-long[1] aqueduct in the United States that carries water from Northern California to Southern California. and Littlerock Reservoir and to save precious well water for dry years. Located near the intersection of Avenue S and Sierra Highway, the plant takes water from Lake Palmdale and purifies it through filtration and chlorinization. The water originates from the aqueduct aqueduct (ăk`wədŭkt) [Lat.,=conveyor of water], channel or trough built to convey water, chiefly for providing a densely populated region with a supply of freshwater. and from the San Gabriel Mountains San Gabriel Mountains, S Calif., E and NE of Los Angeles, running c.50 mi (80 km) westward from Cajon Pass. San Antonio Peak (10,080 ft/3,072 m) is the highest of the range. Citrus fruits are raised on the southern foothills. runoff Runoff The procedure of printing the end-of-day prices for every stock on an exchange onto ticker tape. Notes: If the "tape is late" then it can take a long time to print off all the closing prices. , which fills Littlerock Reservoir. CAPTION(S): Map MAP: Site of plant explosion |
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