2 homes uninhabitable from Woods Cross explosion

WOODS CROSS — Linda Wood looked over her shoulder at the five men rolling her 100-year-old upright piano down her driveway and offered a word of advice.

"It's gonna take six of you to lift it," she said, as they prepared to put the piano on a flatbed trailer.

Wood hadn't planned to move out of the home her family has lived in since January 2004. But an explosion Wednesday at the Silver Eagle Refinery a few hundred feet from her backyard left her home uninhabitable.

"The doors were blown off the hinges," Wood said. "Windows were blown out. The house was blown off the foundation."

A volunteer at Woods Cross Elementary, Wood was at the school when the blast occurred around 9:15 a.m. She said she felt the shock wave but attributed it to concrete work being done on the campus. Then she reached her heavily damaged two-story home at 2162 S. 925 West.

"I knew what happened," she said. "I saw the smoke from the refinery."

Wood's home was one of at least a dozen that were damaged, and one of two deemed uninhabitable, after hydrogen and diesel fuel leaked from a pipeline and ignited, setting off a massive explosion, according to South Davis Metro Fire Deputy Chief Jeff Bassett.

The blast was felt by people from Roy to Salt Lake, fire officials said, and caused a power bump that led other refineries in the area to shut down. Those shutdowns prompted the release of huge plumes of smoke from the facilities' flare towers when they burned off gas as part of their emergency procedures and later, when they resumed operations.

Bassett said when South Davis firefighters reached the refinery, 2355 S. 1100 West, a fire crew comprised of Silver Eagle employees already was working to put out the blaze. The fire was brought under control in about 30 minutes, he said.

"When that product explodes, it looks really dramatic, but then it's over with," Bassett said.

No one was injured by the explosion or the fire, and there were no evacuations ordered.

Dave McSwain, president of Silver Eagle Refining Inc., said all of the refinery's piping had recently been inspected by an independent contractor and meets regulatory standards. He said the facility is in a "continual process of retrofitting," and the company considers employee and community safety a priority.

"We have spent a large amount of money on the safety program at the refinery," McSwain said.

Still, Silver Eagle safety manager Dan Beecher said the Woods Cross facility has an average record over the past 10 years, when compared with other refineries along the Wasatch Front.

"There are two that have more (OSHA) violations, two that have less," Beecher said. "We fall right smack in the middle."