In big casting operations, sand casted parts go through shakers on mesh belts. Sand wears stuff out. The parts also run through annealing furnaces on long time controlled belts. A furnace can be 100 feet long or longer. All about time, temp, and flow.
We were changing the shafts and pillow blocks on a shaker. The shakers are adjacent to the furnace lines for minimum handling of parts. Normal maintenance. Standard 4" GM spec shafts and bearings. Every GM plant uses the same shaft size and bearing set.
Well, suddenly I saw a flash, felt a wave lift me in the air, and then the world was all orange, and then black as the deepest mine shaft. I could not breath. I was engulfed in fire, but it was not very hot.
Then, I was sitting on my arse in the blackness. Then Orange embers began to fall like a firey snow storm. A whirlwind of orange sparkly embers in the pitch black. Then, like stars on a cloudy, moonless night, the sodium vapor lamps 50 feet above, began to show through the blackness. Their glow increasing with each heartbeat, and the settling of the ash.
I stuck my face into my shirt to try and catch a breath in the dust and fire. The firey soot settling all around me.
Light finally returned enough to move. You can't run when you can't see.
I looked for my partner Dave. He was in the shaker at the blast.
Dave's a very sober guy. Smooth as Hubel's glass. He was looking at me.
He say's to me, "You alright kid?" I check myself for damage, just a few dents. I shake my head yes. "Go on and take alook for any meat around by the control office, them's the kind that kills people." I stumbled across the pile of pump castings and cinder blocks over to the control booth. There was no one inside. No....meat to be found at the blast site. Just mangled chainlink, refractory cement, and cinder blocks.
I looked across the aisle to the furnace. The gas fueled annealing furnace had had a gas build up of un burned fuel, and had blown a 30 foot section of the tunnel out. Directly across the aisle from the control booth, which disintegrated and rained parts and block at Dave and I. Well, mostly I.
The operator came running down the aisle to find Dave and I. We were OK. He'd been on break. Or he'd have been the meat.
His office was destroyed. A direct hit, that saved my life.
The fire was the carbon rich gas burning in the atmosphere. The cinders, the accumulated soot and ash that was blasted off the ceilings, beams, and machinery during the blast. It was ready for paint after the soot fell.
Within an hour, division level GM managers were in the plant interviewing us.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
