Explosion at Idaho waste site kills one, injures three

BOISE, Idaho — An explosion Saturday at a hazardous waste site in southwestern Idaho killed one worker, injured three others and heavily damaged a building, officials said.

US Ecology, which runs the site, said Monte “Alex” Green of Grand View, Idaho, died of his injuries from the explosion at 9:23 a.m. inside one of the buildings at the facility.

Green was working as an equipment operator moving materials at the time of the accident, the company said.

Three others received treatment for non-life threatening injuries, the company said. A total of 15 US Ecology employees were working during the time of the explosion. The facility is about 50 miles south of Boise.

“Most of the skin has been blown out, and much of the metal has been bent,” Simon Bell, the company’s vice president of operations and chief operating officer, said of the building. “It would have been a large explosion based on the damage to the building.”

There’s no threat to the public, and emergency crews, including a hazardous materials team, were at the site, Owyhee County spokeswoman Angela Barkell said. The facility is about 10 miles east of the small town of Grand View, and about a mile from a highway.

“No immediate threat has been identified, and no evacuations have taken place,” Barkell said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Bell said employees were doing routine work at the time of the blast, but he didn’t want to speculate on the cause.

“Since we had an explosion there was something out of the ordinary, and we will be fiercely focused on understanding what that is,” he said.

The company takes in contaminants such as arsenic, lead, zinc, cadmium and other metals that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed hazardous and converts them to non-hazardous residues, minimizing the long-term risks of disposal.

The company then buries them at the site, which Bell said is about 200 acres. Bell said the company is working with emergency responders by providing maps of the facility and where various hazardous wastes are being stored.

Emergency officials said the building where the explosion occurred is used to process powdered magnesiumproducts.officialssaidaseries of chemical reactions followed the initial blast.

US Ecology Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Feeler issued a statement about the explosion.

We are deeply saddened to confirm that there has been one fatality resulting from the accident at our Grand View, Idaho facility today,” Feeler said.

The three people who are being treated at hospitals and expected to recover.

Bell said the company, which also has facilities in other states, has neverhadsuchadisaster.