A laboratory technician at Shropshire’s sugar beet factory warned her bosses there was a potential problem with one of the giant boilers at the plant - just a day before it exploded in a fatal accident, an inquest heard.
Stoker Robert Howe suffered terrible burns when he was showered with red hot coals at British Sugar’s Allscott plant, near Wellington.
A colleague braved intense heat, smoke and dust to carry him outside but Mr Howe died the next day at a specialist burns unit in Nottingham.
The inquest, which began yesterday at the Park Inn, Telford, is the culmination of a five-year battle by his family to get answers about the accident which happened on March 2, 2003.
Mr Howe, 52, of Hordley Road, Wellington, was captain of the darts team and bailiff of the fishing team at the Allscott social club.
He was described by his partner Christine as a “wonderful father and partner”.
He was working on the night shift, removing clinker from a furnace with a spade-like instrument, when a steam pipe fractured, showering him with coals.
Telford & Wrekin Coroner, Mr Michael Gwynne, said the inquest would hear how experts had spotted “an unusual chemical disparity” between the coal-fired boilers at the factory, which closed last year.
Lawyers for Mr Howe’s family and the Health and Safety Executive are asking questions about whether the boilers should have been shut down for investigation at the height of the 24-hour-a-day sugar beet campaign.
Marie Bain, of Shrewsbury, then working for British Sugar as a laboratory technician, said her job was to take samples of water from the boilers.
A full analysis on March 1 showed water coming out very hot and contamination in the sample line.
She said she informed her superiors and expressed concern, although she felt, after a change in the laboratory structure, that “my opinion was not properly valued”.
She said: “I was concerned the boiler could go up.”
Robert Blogg, of the Health and Safety Executive, said sugar beet was washed, shredded and soaked in boiling water to extract the sugar.
The process involved 30ft high coal-fired boilers which operated like a domestic pressure cooker and generated electricity from super-heated steam.
The hearing continues.
By Peter Johnson
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