 Today's video I'm looking at a disaster back in Blighty, albeit very far from my freezing corner of south London. It's quarter past noon on the 11th of May 2004 and emergency workers are searching the rubble of a disaster site. The search for survivors and victims has only just begun. The site they're working on in Grove Park Mills, Mary Hill, Glasgow is officially owned and operated by ICL Plastics Limited, but locally it is called the Stockline Plastics Factory. The disaster would highlight that British plants were no safer than anywhere else on earth, bursting the at least nationally perceived bubble of UK industrial safety. Of course we know this to be a wrong assumption. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. Stockline Plastics, a background. This is my second video about a disaster in Glasgow. As a side note, I'm not sure I've mentioned this on my previous video, the city has one of the best transport museums I've ever been to. Anyway great museums aside, our story starts with the opening of the Stockline Plastics Plant in 1969. It was flanked by Hope Hill Road, Grove Park Street and Grove Park Place, which is around here on a Glaswegian map. The site had been used for over a hundred years, originally seeing use as a textiles factory, but later being repurposed into a paper mill in the late 1800s. The main building was a product of its time, being constructed of timber supported by a grid of cast iron beams. It had a stair tower added in 1907 and in the 1970s had its pitch roof replaced with a flat one. As the site turned into a plastics plant, it would undergo some changes. On the main building, one third of the ground floor was used as a dispatch area and the remaining two thirds housed the coating shop. This was where plastic coating was applied to metal components. To do plastic coating you need ovens and of course that needs heat. This came from eight ovens on site, six electric and two gas, with the latter using LPG. Fabrication was undertaken on site here at a different building. This was where the plastic and metal items were well fabricated. By the early 2000s, Stockline Plastics was mainly storing and selling bulk plastic sheeting, with the ability to alter and cut the sheets to customer requirements. So the LPG pipework and storage on site was installed by Cala Gas, which for those of you who are not from the UK are a major supplier of LPG and you see their tanks all over the place. Well Cala installed the gas work and this included a two ton tank and a buried pipe into the main building for the LPG ovens. The pipes ran through the basement of the main building, then went to the ground floor and ran along the wall to the LPG ovens. Much of the pipework was made of galvanized steel, but the pipework between the storage vessel and the point of entry to the basement did not have much else in terms of waterproof coating. Most of the screwed iron fittings, straight couplings, bends and elbows joining the lengths of pipework were ungalvanized. After installation in the 1960s, the yard of the site was raised by approximately 1.1 meters. This meant that the pipework running into the main building became inaccessible and visible from the outside. It still could be seen from the inside, but a later modification of a steel floor made internal inspection also not possible. The health and safety executive undertook several inspections over the site's history. A reoccurring concern that was raised was the location of the tank. In 1998, Johnston oils took over the supply to the site from Caligas. They requested Cala remove their tank, which was completed in March. And Johnston oils then went and installed a one ton tank of their own. But due to the company not being involved in the original installation of the pipework, the liability of Johnston oil only went as far as the first regulator. During the new tank install, a soundness test was undertaken and no issues could be seen, but this wasn't actually a full visual check of the system. Thus the unprotected and only partially galvanized pipework went virtually unchecked. In 2002, another soundness check was undertaken during a regulator change and again no issues were reported. But again, this wasn't a visual check of the system. So I need to address the rather confusing naming of the site. I've been calling it so far the Stockline Plastic site, although it was actually called and owned by ICL Group. Me calling it Stockline was no mistake however, due to Stockline being the main public facing part of the business. If that if you wanted to buy, then that was the arm of the organisation that would have fulfilled your order. Stockline was mainly based out of the warehouse, with ICL Plastics and ICL Tech actually using the main building for production and admin. So all was quiet at ICL Plastics. Not much in the way of disasters had affected the site. Well until it would on a deadly day in 2004. The disaster. It is the morning of the 11th of May 2004, and workers at ICL and Stockline Plastics are working as normal. With no hint of what was coming, orders were being processed and general admin was being undertaken in the main building. At about midday, an explosion erupted from the Victorian main building. Within seconds the overpressure caused a structure to collapse virtually into its own footprint. Emergency services were called and by quarter past 12 the police had set up a control point on site. A major incident had been declared by half past as the rescue began. Initially five fire crews were in attendance, but the number would swell over the afternoon. Triage was set up nearby for the injured, of which there were many. Debris had scattered the buildings and into the nearby streets. The injured were sent to various hospitals around Glasgow and by mid-afternoon 24 had been rescued from the rubble, but another 16 were feared to be still be buried. By 9pm the last survivor was recovered, leaving a total of 9 losing their lives and 37 injured. Amongst the victims were two of the company's directors. Bodies would be removed for the next three days with the final victim being found at 11.25am on the 14th of May. In total 300 emergency workers would assist in the rescue and recovery efforts. The site was handed over to the police and thus the cause of the disaster could be investigated. The investigation. Fire investigators and the police scoured the disaster site looking for any hints as to the cause. The report into the disaster would be provided by the Health and Safety Executive. They are the government organisation that usually investigates these kinds of things. The building's basement and floor had shown the most damage at the Hope Hill road end, hinting at the starting point of the explosion. The Grove Park street end was severely damaged but remained semi-standing. The LPG tank had been dislodged and the warehouse was largely intact. This allowed investigators to zero in on the epicentre. The concrete floor was destroyed in the main building. This damage was a hallmark of a large sudden force that would be produced by an explosion, for example, from below the steel floor. Blood samples from one of the victims found in the basement was discovered to have traces of propane in it. This hinted strongly at a propane leak before the victim passed away. This pointed the finger at the LPG storage and plumbing situation at ICL plastics. Leaders to say it was time to dig up the pipework for a thorough inspection and what they found was a smoking gun of sorts. Upon excavation they found the pipe to be severely corroded where it made its way into the basement of the main building. There was a crack that was around 70% of the circumference of the pipe which had allowed LPG to leak out into the basement. It was found that the soil around this section of pipe nearest the building was highly corrosive, due to the high runoff of rainwater from the building, leading to the soil to be almost constantly damp. The section had been covered during the yard raising with backfill on concrete which aggravated the corrosion. The LPG leaked and accumulated in the basement, where it was only a matter of time before a spark would set off the whole building. The LPG system on the site was clearly the issue. But who was to blame? Well criminal and civil proceedings, unsurprisingly, would come next. In 2006 the Crown prosecution Service had enough to charge ICL under the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974, very accused of failing to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of employees while at work in failing to identify that the pipework conveying the LPG gas from the bulk vessel storage to the premises presented a potential hazard and risk. To appoint one or more competent persons to assist in carrying out such risk assessments. To have a proper system of inspection and maintenance in respect to the LPG pipework concerned. And finally, to ensure, so far as there was reasonably practical, that the pipework was maintained in a condition that was safe and without risk to employees. The next year, on the 17th of August 2007 at Glasgow High Court, ICL pled guilty to the charges and the two companies under ICL Group, ICL Tech and ICL Plastics were ordered to pay £200,000 each in fines. So today's subject I'm going to rate it as negligence, as well that pipe was allowed to corrode which sadly led to the disaster. And I'm also going to rate it to 5 on my legacy scale, might be lower if you're not from the UK and would definitely be higher if you're from Scotland. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative, commons, attribution, share, light, licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently cold corner of southern London UK. I'd like to thank my Patreons and my YouTube members for your financial support, as well as the rest of you who tune in every week for your weekly dose of disaster. If you're enjoying this outro song, then please feel free to head over to my second channel, made by John, where you can listen to it and watch it and watch the video in full. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please.