Five days after the Wednesday, 5 December 2018, tragic explosion at the Polyplas plastics factory in Villas Agrícolas, Distrito Nacional, the director of the Center for Emergency Operations, Juan Manuel Mendez announced rescue operations had concluded after no more missing persons had been reported related to the explosion. The toll of the accident is eight dead, 103 injured and 25 families affected. Efforts are now concentrated at the site on the removal of debris and cleanup.
Three more of the injured are hospitalized at the Ney Arias Lora burn unit, with serious burns at 50% of their bodies. The Ministry of Public Works is assisting 63 houses in the neighborhood that were affected by the explosion.
The deceased have been identified as: 55 years old Rafael Contreras Báez; 46-year old Claudio Hernandez Jimenez; 49-year old Julio Salazar Mejia; 31 year old Ronny Vargas; 44 year old Jose Alberto Encarnación; 49-year old Manuel Esteban Rosario Ramírez, a contractor for the company. The National Institute of Forensic Sciences is working to identify the corpses of two women that could be Rosa Melia Núñez and Maria Altagracia Garabito, both Polyplas employees who are missing.
The Fire Department issued their preliminary report on the accident establishing the explosion originated in the natural gas escape at the time when the fuel was fed from a Propagas tanker truck to the main tank of the factory. The report states: “It is presumed by the statements of the operator that when he realized the leak he tried to stop it but it was too late”. The truck operator, Jimmy Gutiérrez, told firefighters that the gas leak disoriented him and the burns he received “restricted his movements delaying his shutting off the emergency valve of the truck’s tank.
It is reported that Gutiérrez asked the Polyplas staff to “turn everything off”, but he says he was told by the security of the company that they could not do so “because the whole system would be shut down.” The report of the Fire Department states that it could not verify if the company had leak detection devices. Nor was it possible to verify if the emergency alarms worked.
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11 December 2018
