Greater Kaohsiung authorities have ordered LCY Chemical Corp, the company suspected of being responsible for the deadly gas explosions that rocked the city last week, to shut down one of its plants until safety improvements are made, a city official said yesterday.
Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生), head of the city’s Economic Development Bureau, said that LCY Chemical’s Dashe (大社) plant in Kaohsiung should be shut down immediately to conduct an overall review of the production facility and the pipeline network connected to it to improve safety.
Tseng cited the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ order to shut down petrochemical plants belonging to the Formosa Plastics Group in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Industrial zone in 2011 in the wake of major fires as a precedent for the move.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
“The public is uneasy [after the July 31 explosions]. The government should do something and not let angry people lay siege to the plant,” Tseng said.
He said that although the pipeline that is thought to have leaked propene and suspected of triggering the explosions was not within the boundaries of LCY Chemical’s Dashe property, it should be considered an extension of the plant and fall under its safety management.
The series of powerful explosions that began just minutes before midnight on July 31 killed 30 people, injured more than 300 and ripped up roads along the pipeline’s route in downtown Kaohsiung.
LCY Chemical responded that it would cooperate with the city government’s order to inspect its production facility and improve the management of the pipelines both inside and outside the plant used to transport its raw materials.
The Dashe plant, which produces propene, also known as polypropylene, is one of four production facilities LCY Chemical has in the Kaohsiung metropolitan area, according to the company’s Web site. It also has a storage terminal in the city’s port area.
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