Phosphate Rocks by Fiona Erskine

Author:Fiona Erskine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2021-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-nine

The Blinding

On the day of the accident, a hard frost had set in.

Willy was writing his log in the control room when an alarm sounded from the panel. He checked the readings and traced the problem back to a low flow of concentrated acid to the dilution plant.

Willy put on his donkey jacket, stepped outside and shivered. The pump was running, the motor whirring, the inlet and outlet valves wide open and yet the pressure gauge was reading zero, so it was not unnatural to assume, given the peculiar freezing point curve of oleum, that there might be a blockage in the pipe.

Willy did what any self-respecting process operator at the time would have done: he found a steam hose and a hammer.

When the pipe split and the concentrated sulphuric acid encountered Willy’s eyes, the first burn was a chemical burn. The proteins and lipids in his living tissue were destroyed by amide and ester hydrolysis. The second burn was a thermal burn. The strong acid absorbed the moisture from his eyes, liberating heat. Willy couldn’t distinguish the chemical burn from the thermal burn. All he could do was scream.

John heard the commotion from inside the shift manager’s office. At first it was a howl of shock rather than pain: those cries would come later. John put down his mug of tea, dropped his half-eaten Tunnock’s caramel wafer and ran towards the noise. He was second on the scene. Roger was already there; he had pulled Willy to the safety shower and was holding him down. John took in the situation with one glance and walked swiftly past them to the sulphuric acid plant office. He calmly phoned Alec, the gateman, and told him to call an ambulance and declare an emergency in that order. He put on the rubber gloves that Willy kept in his donkey jacket and armed himself with the eyewash bottle from the lab. He shouted at Roger to hold on to Willy as he embraced them in the outdoor shower. Willy wouldn’t open his eyes, so Roger had to pin him to the wall while John forced his eyelids apart to irrigate them. It was too late. The acid had attacked the cornea, and where his eyes had once been clear blue with dark pupils, they were now completely white and opaque.

They saved his life, however. Willy cursed them for that during months of pain in one hospital after another. His complete blindness spared him the awful sight of his scarred face and body. He could only feel the ridges of the scar tissue and the edges of the skin grafts with the pinkie of his left hand. His other fingertips, burned as he tried to remove his acid-soaked clothes, would never recover any feeling.

The investigation into what had happened focused on Willy’s failure to follow procedure. He should not have hit the frozen oleum pipe with a hammer. Furthermore, if he was intent on clearing a blockage, he should have worn personal protective equipment;

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