Two people are dead and at least eleven were hospitalized after a Louisville, Kentucky, food-coloring factory exploded, damaging homes and other businesses in the area.
The explosion occurred on Tuesday afternoon at the Givaudan Sense Colour plant, and prompted a “shelter-in-place” order in the surrounding neighborhood due to concerns of an ammonia leak, ABC News reported:
Aerial footage of the damaged facility shows that a massive part of the factory collapsed, killing two employees and wounding several others.
“We are deeply saddened to share the news that two of our team members lost their lives in this accident,” Givaudan Sense Colour said in a statement to the outlet.
Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) called the loss “heartbreaking” in a post on X:
“I hope everyone will join [my wife] Britainy and me in praying for their families and the entire community,” he wrote.
Out of the eleven people injured, two were wounded critically and four remain in the hospital as of Wednesday morning, according to ABC. All of those who were injured are also factory employees.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) also mourned the loss of the employees, saying, “This is an incredibly sad and tragic incident. These two individuals who passed went to their job like an ordinary day to provide for their family and the unthinkable happened.”
A shelter-in-place order was initially put in place for residents in the area due to fears of a potential ammonia leak, though it has since been lifted after none was detected.
Carly Johnson was home with her husband and four-year-old son when they heard a “crazy loud boom” and felt their house shake, she told the Associated Press.
“It felt like a bomb. It was very scary,” she said, recounting how items that were hanging on her wall began to shake and fall down.
Amanda Strecker, who used to live near the plant until 2022, told the outlet she had shared concerns with local officials over “chemical smells in the air.”
“We felt when we lived there that something was going to happen. It was just a matter of time,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of problems with chemical smells in the air, reporting it locally to the environmental office, and them coming out and not finding anything.”
The same facility faced another deadly explosion in 2003, killing one worker.
“Federal investigators determined a pressure relief valve on a tank had been removed when the company moved the tank to its Louisville plant in 1989,” the AP reported. “The tank exploded because there was no relief valve, according to a report from the Chemical Safety Board.”
The cause of the latest explosion is under investigation, officials said.
