Middletown, February 08, 2009: An explosion blew apart a power plant under construction as workers purged natural gas lines Sunday, killing multiple people and injuring at least 14 in a blast that shook homes for miles, officials said.

Betsy Hard, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, told that multiple people died in the explosion at the Kleen Energy plant but she did not know how many.

Fifty construction workers were in the section of the power plant where the explosion happened at 11:17 a.m., said Al Santostefano, the deputy fire marshal in Middletown, about 20 miles south of Hartford. He said he did not know what caused the explosion.

Hospitals that were treating the 14 wounded said late Sunday afternoon that they weren’t expecting more patients.

Dogs were searching for victims in the rubble, but there were no signs of life Sunday afternoon, he said.

“They are taking the building apart piece-by-piece now, the part that collapsed and came in, they are taking that apart in sections piece-by-piece, very carefully,” he said.

The 620-megawatt plant was being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas. Santostefano said workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging the gas lines, a procedure he called a “blow-down,” when the explosion occurred.

Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They’ve identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.

(Agencies)