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  • Acid Tank Explosion at Rolls-Royce Plant Injures Nine People

    An acid spill Friday afternoon near Indianapolis led to an explosion that injured workers at a Rolls-Royce plant.

    Authorities with the Indianapolis Fire Department confirmed that the transferring of nitric acid at the West Township-based facility caused the incident.

    The department’s spokesman Patrick Pruitt says that the highly explosive chemical was being removed from a 250-gallon tank.

    Workers on the manufacturing floor were transferring the acid when the tank unknowingly started to leak.

    A “nitric acid escape” eventually caused a chemical cloud to form inside the building, says Rolls-Royce VP of Communications Joel P. Reuter.

    Authorities say they are unsure about how much acid was inside the tank at the time of the spill.

    Fire departments from three different cities responded to the acid explosion. A hazardous material team also appeared on the scene to minimize the damages nitric acid is known to cause-which are respiratory problems and severe burns.

    Nearly 500 workers were immediately evacuated away from the facility. However, nine employees sustained injuries from the blast.

    One was treated on scene while the other eight were taken to local hospitals for acid exposure.

    The victims’ conditions have now been labeled as stable.

     

    Fire crews were able to subdue the chemical cloud later that afternoon and informed the company that it was safe to reenter the plant.

    Pruitt told NBC News: “Now it’s just a matter of making sure that we … get that material neutralized.”

    The facility decided to cancel second shift just to take extra precaution. Workers were allowed to return to work and continue their shifts Saturday.

    The definite cause of the explosion is still unclear and is being investigated by authorities.

    The Rolls-Royce Company in Indianapolis is commonly recognized for its aviation and marine production at the plant. The company has more than 10 other facilities located in the state.

    Image via YouTube

  • Omaha Explosion Claims the Lives of Two Workers

    An explosion at an Omaha, Neb., factory left two dead and ten hospitalized on Monday morning.

    Thirty-eight staff members were working at the International Nutrition animal-feeding plant when a sudden explosion knocked out the lights in the building.

    Authorities are clueless to what may have caused the incident but reported that witnesses saw the back wall of the building collapse.

    Thirty-eight-year-old Kendrick Houston was working on the main floor when he noticed a tremble from beneath the building’s floor. He reported to the Omaha World-Herald  that the event happened so fast that he and another co-worker immediately reacted and ran for the exit.

    “There was this real loud crackling sound, and the lights went off. I saw a spark, and there was a big ball of flame coming from the southwest corner of the building,” he said.

    According to a Fox News report via the Associated Press, 21-year-old Nate Lewis was working on the first floor when he heard the explosion. He resorted to using his cell phone light to crawl outside to safety. Shaken up by the events, Lewis even made a statement that he believes he won’t be returning back to his job as a production line worker.(image)

    Omaha’s Fire Chief Bernie Kanger asserts that no hazardous chemicals played a part in the blast, but due to safety risks, the wreckage has yet to be removed.

    Kanger also insists that his team are taking their time to sift through the rubble left by the explosion.

    “We haven’t cleared the building yet because of the significant risk to our people,” Kanger told AP.

    Seven injured workers have refused medical treatment while nineteen others have yet to be accounted for.

    The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still investigating the reason behind the explosion.

    Kanger confirms that the death toll may rise in numbers as the fire department and search-and-rescue experts continue their search through the debris.

    Image via Youtube

  • The ‘Map of Life’ Tracks All Life on Planet Earth

    The ‘Map of Life’ Tracks All Life on Planet Earth

    The Map of life is an online tool that tracks and catalogues all of the world’s biodiversity. Every species of animal and plant life is catalogued and presented to you on an in-browser app.

    The project is led by biodiversity scientists Walter Jetz and Robert Gurainick. The goal is to create a living map that measures biodiversity in geographical terms, and shows changes in the territories a species inhabits as species grow and decline.

    “Imagine if you had the world’s most amazing field guide,” said Guralnick, biodiversity scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder to Good Environment. “When you go to the national parks or out exploring, you had at your fingertips something that was not just a static book but the world’s most amazing field guide that changed and that you could contribute to.”

    Right now the map is only in Beta version, with around 25,000 species included. There are over a million known species living on our planet, and those are just the ones we know about. There are potentially millions of undocumented species out there.

    Gurainick and Jetz’s goal was to bring biodiversity maps into the modern age: “Where geography was 150 years… that’s kind of what we’re doing today in the world of biodiversity,” Guralnick told Good. “Whereas today anyone can zoom in on a digital map and see details at the neighborhood level, the finest-grained biodiversity data is orders of magnitude more difficult to capture. Different sources of data about a species also provide different types of information. Some are really good at telling you where species are not, Some of them are really good at telling you where species are.”

    If you want to find out what is around your specific region, right-click on the map around where you live, and you will be able to select the species you want to track from a list. As well as a scientific project, it also makes a great teaching tool. Teachers will be able to show students of any age, the wildlife in their own back yards.

    Wild Turkey

    This is a screen cap that shows the prevalence of two different species of Wild Turkey, but you can explore the map for yourself, here.