Official: Unclear if victims remain in US plant

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - A power plant explosion that killed at least five people left a section of the building too unstable for rescue crews to determine whether everyone was accounted for, a fire official said Monday.

Piles of rubble were 10 feet (3 meters) tall in some parts of the plant, and mounds of rubble and debris were everywhere, said Middletown Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano. On Sunday night, he had said no one was missing but by Monday morning, he said, the extent of the damage was clearer and officials realized there was a section of building that could not be searched.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Monday morning that officials still haven't received rosters of workers who were at the Kleen Energy Systems plant Sunday, and Santostefano said he didn't know when emergency crews would be able to search the unstable area.

"There are a number of contractors who do the work at the building," Rell told WTNH-TV. "Until we actually have a roster of the names of those individuals that are in each of those groups and who was working on Sunday, we need that before we can do anything else. ... We're still confirming the number of people."

Santostefano said there were "piles of rubble everywhere, debris everywhere. In some places the debris is as high as 10 feet," or 3 meters.

Local fire investigators and federal authorities on Monday were expected to begin their investigation into what caused Sunday morning's explosion at the plant in Middletown, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Hartford.

A dozen or more others were hurt in the blast, which happened as gas lines were being tested. The explosion was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away.

The blast left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing at the site on a wooded parcel of land.

Rescue crews combed through the debris until about 2:30 a.m. Monday.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was mobilizing a team of workers from Colorado and hoped to have them on the scene by midday Monday, spokesman Daniel Horowitz said.

The nearly completed 620-megawatt plant is being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the United States' electricity. Workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging a gas line, clearing it of air, when the explosion occurred around 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Santostefano said.

About 50 to 60 people were in the area at the time, he said.

Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on the plant in February 2008. It had signed a deal with Connecticut Light and Power for the electricity produced by the plant, which was scheduled to be completed by mid-2010 and would be one of the biggest built in the northeastern region in the last few years.

The company is run by former City Councilman William Corvo. A message left at Corvo's home was not returned. Calls to Gordon Holk, general manager of Power Plant Management Services, which has a contract to manage the plant, also weren't returned.