HELL ON EARTH AT REDCAR BLAST FURNACE.

Footage of Redcar steelworks blast furnace which ceased production on Friday 19th February 2010 with the loss of 1,600 jobs.
A former worker there carrying out maintenance work on the dome described it as "like hell on earth, when you looked down it was like looking into a volcano. when the orange mist came up you could'nt see your hand in front of your face, you had to be careful in case you lost your footing and plummeted into the molten metal."
Teesside's steel Industry dates back to the 1850's when iron ore was discovered in the cleveland hills.
There were 40 furnaces aligning the river tees producing two million tons of cast iron annually. When in the 1870's Bessemer invented a method of turning iron into steel the number of furnaces began to diminish.
At it's period of greatest production the steelworks employed more than 40,000 people. The steelworks were nationalised in 1967 and became the British steel corporation. Resources were concentrated into one blast furnace at Redcar which is the second largest blast furnace in Europe.
The corporation became British Steel in 1988, in 1999 it merged with Dutch company Hoogevens to become Corus.
Some workers took voluntary redundancy, while thousands more were made redundant over the years.
The furnace was mothballed on 19th February 2010, a £320m takeover of TCP (Teesside cast products) by SSI (Sahaviriya steel industries) was signed on 24th February 2011.
I filmed this footage in November, December 2009.
The edited track I used for the video is "Punished" by Throbbing gristle, performing at Sheffield University 10th june 1980, from the album throbbing gristle live volume 4 1979-1980.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• INDUSTRY
• TEESSIDE
• REDCAR BLAST FURNACE
• SAVE OUR STEEL
• CORUS
• SOUTH GARE
• RIVER TEES
• NORTH EAST ENGLAND
• TCP
• TATA
• yt:stretch=16:9
• SSI

[mecaguy03]

Where can I get this track?

[loxi59tica]

@mecaguy03 For track title and related album info see video description. Try googling Throbbing Gristle, There might be a site flogging their wares...Good luck.

[tekragnarok]

is that throbbing gristle?

[loxi59tica]

@tekragnarok Read the video description and all will be revealed.

[loxi59tica]

Steady on.

[tpvalley]

if they shut the furnace down it cannot be restarted ever evidently.

we will be at the mercy of foreign industry, held to ransom, brown sold our gold cheap, he allowing our industry to dissappear and he signed us away to the EU: who does he work for and what is his agenda, I believe he is trying to ruin us and is working for some secret euro society, some masonic evil corporation. soon we will be to poor and hungry to notice any government sins.

[mk3stargazer]

@tpvalley Bet it was lovely working in there during winter!

[tpvalley]

@TheShotblaster

so do they have to warm it slowly?

something to do with insulation tiles?

I like them locos they use for the molten iron etc, love to know what engines they have.

[TheShotblaster]

@tpvalley they will be fireing it up on the first of march i know this as i have just been working on it for the last 5 weeks doing a refirb glad im back home now just incase it goes BANG when they start it up

[michaelmyres619]

@asdasd9595 take a bath ya dirty hippy

[Blaskoxx]

@mecaguy03 In hell!!

[asdasd9595]

thats really polluting

[stickman170]

I see don't see why workers bother to wear long pants :O

[autigers2010nc]

So sad to see so many of these jobs going to china, please bring them home Mr. President! These idiotic trade agreements are what started our problem, how can they think signing more trade agreements are going to help? NAFTA is what started all loss of American jobs! Gos Bless America!!