RALEIGH
Federal officials voted Thursday night to adopt urgent safety recommendations in response to last year's deadly explosion at a Slim Jim snack factory in North Carolina.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board approved the recommendations by a 2-1 vote after a public hearing in Raleigh.
A statement on the board's Web site said the recommendations urged the National Fire Protection Association, American Gas Association and the International Code Council to strengthen the national fuel-gas code provisions on purging.
Specifically, the proposal called for gas purges outside of a building or require an approved safety plan, such as the evacuation of nonessential personnel.
The explosion in June at the ConAgra Foods Inc. plant in Garner killed four people and hurt dozens of others. A settlement last month between ConAgra and the state Labor Department said that a contractor released a mixture of pressurized gas and air into an enclosed room while installing a natural-gas-fired water heater.
ConAgra agreed to pay $106,000 for workplace safety violations.
Safety-board staff identified similar explosions that involved the purging of gas lines, including a May 2008 incident during the construction of a San Diego hotel that injured 14, an August 2007 explosion at a hotel in Cheyenne, Wyo., that injured two, and an explosion at a Porterville, Calif., school that burned two plumbers in November 2005.
Also, they noted another incident in North Carolina -- a 1997 explosion at a fitness center in Cary that injured six.
Donald Holmstrom, a CSB investigations supervisor, said that the agency was also investigating whether there was a problem with putting an explosive hazard in the middle of the ConAgra building instead of on the structure's outskirts.
He said that even "a fairly modest" explosion would have caused 11-ton sections of the building's roof to collapse.
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