Officials at Eastern Farmers Co-op here are puzzled why the top on a tank containing 28 percent liquid nitrogen blew off last Friday afternoon, Jan. 11, during a welding procedure and landed a few yards away. There were no injuries.
Zach Weiland, safety supervisor at the plant, was reluctant to provide any details since the investigators from the parent company CHS Inc. had not arrived on the scene as of Monday morning. He was not sure how much liquid fertilizer was in the tank.
Ryan Longhenry, chief of the Garretson fire department which responded along with Valley Springs fire department and Minnehaha County emergency management, said he believed there was contamination in the tank because the liquid nitrogen should not have been flammable on its own. Longhenry was only two blocks away when the explosion occurred. “They were welding on the side of the tank from a boom truck. One of the welders was in the bucket and one was on the ground. There was definitely an explosion which blew off the top portion of the tank which landed about 50 yards away from the base of the tank.”
Parent company CHS at St. Paul provided this statement: “At approximately 4 p.m. on Friday the Garretson location of Eastern Farmers Cooperative experienced an explosion and fire involving a liquid fertilizer tank that was undergoing maintenance by a welder from a private contractor. The Garretson Fire Department responded promptly and extinguished the fire within a few minutes. There were no injuries, no spills and no risks to the surrounding community. Eastern Farmers is committed to safety in all of its operations and will conduct a full investigation to determine the cause of the incident.”