I was surprised yesterday to see this in the news
Police say they have found the bodies of two people missing after an explosion at the ConAgra Foods plant caved in parts of the roof, sparked fires and caused an ammonia leak.
About 300 workers were in the plant at 4851 Jones Sausage Road at the time of the 11:30 a.m. Tuesday blast. Many suffered from exposure to toxic fumes from ammonia leaks, and some also suffered severe burns, authorities said.
It happened in Garner, NC
conagra explosion
And it seems like this company has a history of things going awry
So then I went looking for news about the ConAgra explosion to see if anything more news had developed about what caused the explosion. One of the articles had mentioned that there had been bomb threats over the weekend but did not think the two were linked.
Turns out there are other ConAgra explosions and fires.
One explosion just occured in February 2009 that killed one worker in Seattle
seattle explosion 2009
A plant fire in 2002 killed one person in Indiana
Indiana fire
A fire on Christmas that didn't kill anyone in Kansas
Christmas fire
Three more people died in a 1984 explosion
1984
which the explanation was
Investigators later determined the cause to be an accumulation of grain dust in the plant. The dust would become airborne, creating an explosive mix of oxygen and dust.
"That tower would fill up with dust, very fine particles," Cureton said. "Any spark can set it off, and it's really a bomb going off."
And this isn't about fire but bacteria in peanut butter
Moisture from a leaky roof and faulty sprinkler helped salmonella bacteria grow and contaminate peanut butter at its Georgia plant last year, sickening more than 400 people nationwide, ConAgra Foods said.
dirty peanut butter
Maybe I'm just naive and things happen, but that seems like a fairly big number of bad events at one company.