• One of the four people injured by the explosion in the Elkem Silicones chemical factory in Saint-Fons (Rhône) on Monday has died, the prefecture announced on Tuesday.
• The victim is a 47-year-old man.

The toll of the disaster is increasing. One of the people injured Monday in the explosion at the Elkem Silicones chemical factory in Saint-Fons, near Lyon, died on Tuesday. The victim, a 47-year-old man whose vital prognosis was in jeopardy, “died as a result of his burns”, the prefecture told AFP.

The explosion, followed by a fire, occurred early in the afternoon in this Elkem Silicones silicone-based materials production factory, a Seveso classified site. The Lyon public prosecutor’s office confirmed a report of four injured, including three “seriously burned”, and indicated that it had opened an investigation into “unintentional injuries by a legal entity followed by incapacity for more than three months”.

The injured were three men and a woman – a chemical engineer, two specialized technicians and a person from the factory’s environmental health department – who were working in the site’s pilot workshop, classified Seveso high threshold, at the time of the explosion, Guillaume Artois, in charge of communications, told AFP.

Experimental workshop

The explosion could have been caused by the release of hydrogen “in an experimental workshop”, Jean-Pierre Lerat, the director of the factory, declared to the press on Monday. According to spokesperson Guillaume Artois, this workshop was a “very specific unit, the pilot laboratory, which is not connected to the rest of the site”. It was installed in 2021 and met the requirements of “the latest safety standards”, he assured AFP.

A team there was testing a method for devolatilizing hydrogenated silicone oils, a “relatively common manipulation in a pilot workshop,” he continued. “There was a reaction that was going wrong and the team intervened. During the intervention, there was an emission, probably of hydrogen gas, which could have triggered the explosion,” added the spokesperson.

The Specialized Organized Crime Division (DCOS, formerly PJ), and the Departmental Directorate of Employment, Labor and Solidarity (DDETS), were contacted to determine the causes and circumstances of the explosion, according to the prosecution.

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To put out the fire that followed, around a hundred firefighters were mobilized on Monday. The A7 motorway, railway and river routes on the Rhône near the factory were cut off for a few hours, and around a thousand people around the area were confined for the same time.

In 2016, already on the same Elkem site in Saint-Fons, a person was killed in the fire of silicone drums in a 2,500 m² warehouse.

TM with AFP