DENVER—Five workers trapped by a fire in a water tunnel at a hydroelectric plant died from asphyxiation and smoke inhalation, the Clear Creek County coroner said Wednesday.
The men died Oct. 2 while working to coat the inside of the undeground pipeline with a mixture of epoxy and paint in order to prevent corrosion.
The mixture was kept in a hopper to warm it up so it would flow through a sprayer. The workers were having trouble spraying it so they added a solvent to the hopper and the hopper’s heating element inadvertently turned on, igniting the vapors.
Donald Dejaynes, 43, Dupree Holt, 37, James St. Peters, 52, Gary Foster, 48, and Anthony Aguirre, 18, all of California, were trapped above the fire in the pipeline. Four other workers below the fire escaped.
The workers’ deaths are still being investigated by five agencies, including the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
OSHA is focusing on conditions inside the confined space and what type of protection and safety training the maintenance crew had, among other things. CBI spokesman Lance Clem said state investigators were working to reconstruct the workers’ routine and what happened the day of the fire.
