Several hurt in ADM central Illinois plant blast

Uh-oh; another one down!

CHICAGO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Several employees were hospitalized after an explosion and fire late on Sunday at a massive Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) (ADM.N) facility in Decatur, Illinois, that severely damaged crop processing operations, the company and the local fire department said.
Eight workers were injured at the ADM East processing plant and six were taken to hospital via ambulance, the Decatur Fire Department said in a statement on Monday. Five remained hospitalized on Monday morning, ADM said.

We lost far too many food manufacturing plants in the last 2/3 years. In a year when harvest is low already due to current policies limiting fuel, fertilizer components and effects of 'global warming' we can ill afford these losses.

A prolonged outage at the massive processing facility in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt would put downward pressure on crop prices just as Midwest farmers are preparing to harvest their corn and soybeans. U.S. crop prices, especially for corn, have declined as export demand has slumped.
The Decatur site, ADM's North American headquarters and its largest facility globally, houses soybean crushing facilities and one of the largest corn wet mills in the world.

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Well what do you know……another explosion of a plant needed for critical infrastructure.

a reply to: nugget1

Far to many events like this. Not buying it.

Always the same majority shareholders but they own everything anyway it seems.

a reply to: nugget1


Dunno if your familiar with this, but the US Chemical Safety Board has a ton of video's (short & interesting) that give you a good idea of just how many facilities are complacent about safety/broken equipment knowing it but NOT addressing it to keep up production numbers. Add the Covid debacle, new workers who've never had production experience, older workers retiring an clueless Mgt. These incidents were barreling at us like a freight train.

The YT Channel popped in my feed so I gave it a look-see. Then I spent a lot of time (a LOT!) checking out the combustible dust video's. Learned quite a bit our company has never even brought up in any safety meeting EVER! It's easy to say the food manufacturing facilities accidents are a conspiracy but we have aging machinery, lax maitenence schedules, under informed workers if a company can even get anyone to apply!

BTW the Sugar Refinery that exploded is a great video!
RIP to those killed! Didn't mean to imply a YT video is EVER more important than anyone losing their life.

www.youtube.com...@USCSB/videos

a reply to: Caver78

older workers retiring an clueless Mgt.

older workers being retired by clueless Mgt to save money.
They hire the replacements a whole lot cheaper , and the US government picks up some of the pay while the new employee is in training.
Welcome to the post-Covid world .

Th rest of your post is spot on .

Here's a partial list of over 50 plants destroyed between 2020-2022.

[UPDATED full list of food facility fires in the USA from 2020 - 2022]

That number far exceeded the usual expected complete destruction of food plants in any given year, and while untrained workers could certainly be a contributing factor as Caver78 said, it's still posing a threat to the food supply.

Manufacturers aren't going to take a loss in their profits, so their only recourse is to continue to raise prices-far above what was/is necessary; they've all been making record profits (thanks to Covid) at humanities expense.

I noted that this list doesn't include the thousands of cattle that died 'from heat' at a meat packing plant, or the millions of chickens that died at a production farm.

America isn't the only place experiencing a loss of crops, plants and animals. It may take a year or two before the full effects are felt, but there are already many countries experiencing food insecurity.

Engineered, incompetence or untrained workers; the results will be the same.

a reply to: Gothmog
Wages weren't the only thing. Lots of "legacy"mechanics have been quiting over the longer work hours companies have adopted to meet metrics, plus they are mostly workers who were already past 50-60 yrs old. A mandatory work week of 60-70 hrs for someone 61? They're Noping right outta there!

The newer right out of school individuals have been taught only the latest "wireless" wonder tec
Because facilities haven't upgraded (too costly) there is literally no one who can fix the antique machinery OR do anything with the electrical controls! To be fair the electrical panels ALL look like "Museum of RadioShack".
Mike Rowe did a YT piece about this. Having new graduates in the pipeline but no training on "old stuff" is going to seriously screw the logistics of everything from car parts to food. Shipments of everything is all over the map due to this. One grocery store has some stuff in stock, one down the road has different products but missing others.

Store Managers get "Screaming Karen Theater" but it really is the Manufacturer's fault.

SPAM