Imperial Sugar, the owner of a refinery near Savannah where 13 workers died in a sugar dust explosion in February, knew of safety hazards at the plant as early as 2002 but did nothing, and should pay more than $8.7 million for safety violations, the head of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Friday. The proposed penalty is the third-largest in OSHA's history. Imperial Sugar will contest the findings, the company announced Friday.

At a news conference in Savannah, Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the OSHA chief, said, "The investigation concluded that this catastrophic incident could have been prevented if Imperial Sugar had complied with existing OSHA safety and health standards." The company's senior management was fully aware of the combustible dust hazards, Mr. Foulke said, and did not take any appropriate action to eliminate them.

The fire, which burned for a week, started when sugar dust, which is highly combustible, was ignited in the plant by a large bucket that broke loose in a storage silo and struck a metal siding, causing a spark, according to OSHA's investigation. Even when plants are regularly cleaned, dust can build up on ledges, pipes and other hard-to-reach places. The fire renewed calls for OSHA to issue regulations specifically designed to prevent combustible dust explosions, which can occur in many industries.

Eric Frumin, the health and safety coordinator for the labor union federation Change to Win, said the fines could have been much higher if OSHA had regulations for combustible dust. The agency found 118 "egregious" violations, a category in which the agency counts each instance in which a violation occurs. But per-instance violations can be cited only where the agency has specific standards. In this case, ventilation and dust collection issues fell under the agency's "general duty" clause, which allows it to cite employers for unsafe practices not specifically addressed in the regulations. So while there were 44 violations issued for spark-producing electrical equipment, which is regulated, under the general duty clause there were only two, one at each plant, for faulty ventilation and two for failing to maintain dust collection systems. "It's basically an admission that their standards have gaps," Mr. Frumin said.

SOURCE: The New York Times Company