CLAIRTON, Pa. — The U.S. Steel CEO and more workers are weighing in on the deadly explosion that happened at the Clairton Coke Works.
Two people were killed and 10 people were injured.
Officials said there were no warnings that indicated any problems at the plant.
“It was a normal course of business yesterday,” Scott Buckiso, U.S. Steel’s senior vice president, said. “We were charging ovens and pushing coke out of the oven. We had individuals prepping for a maintenance job in the area, and that’s where we are in the investigation.”
In an interview with NBC News, a mechanical repairman echoed that claim.
“They were getting ready for an outage and that’s what all of us do in our jobs if you’re in maintenance. There’s routine maintenance that takes place and then if you have something coming up that’s major, like an outage or something like that, you do certain things to prepare for that,” said Andrew Macey, a mechanical repairman.
NBC News also sat down with the President and CEO of U.S. Steel, David Burritt. He told them the plant is now safe to operate.
“It is safe to operate now. We don’t know what caused the issue. It was isolated between a couple of our batteries. So, we’re investigating that and so we always say facts are friendly. We’re going to get the truth. We want to make sure we don’t speculate,” Burritt said.
Those batteries are now shut down while federal and state officials investigate.
Batteries 19 and 20 are also offline following the blast as the company works to make valve repairs.
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