Worker killed in Florange accident from Luxembourg

(ADW) The worker who died on Wednesday afternoon at ArcelorMittal in Florange was a 36 year old from Luxembourg who worked for the company DM Services based in Esch-sur-Alzette. An investigation was opened by the Thionville prosecutor to clarify the circumstances of his death. Original reports stated that a tyre of a six-wheeled crane exploded. This has now been ruled out.

An emergency meeting was held on Thursday morning at the Florange plant between Thionville and Metz, where the day before a 36 year old worker and his colleague were removing the wheel of a “scrapper”, a six-wheeled crane. The accident resulted in a death of one man and injury to another. The meeting was attended by the authorities and directors of the companies concerned: ArcelorMittal and Ascor that subcontracts work in Florange to DM Services, a Luxembourg company based in Esch-sur-Alzette.

The tyre could not have exploded for a simple reason: it is hard. The Scrapper’s wheels are composed of this tyre and a rim in three parts, including a safety device to stop them from dislocating from each other. The tyre is inflated at first to 0.5 bar to allow it to be mounted on the rim and then to 10 bar when in place.

This was not the first time the two men worked on the crane as they were called back on Wednesday having already carried out repairs on Monday. An air leak resulted in the contractor calling back the two men to check what was wrong.

On all sides on Thursday, caution was urged, admitting that perhaps one of the parts of the rim had been violently thrown against a worker’s chest; the second man was only saved as he was not directly in the path of the explosion

The deceased worker was a 36 years old from Luxembourg and had worked for many years at DM Services. The second, a French man was hit in the face and injured. He is due to be released from the hospital soon but apparently has no memory of the accident.