Republic Engineering Poducts’ Blast Furnace #4 has just had an explosion. Most likely it’s water coming in contact with heavy molten iron.
US steel bought Johnson Steel in 1898 and began to rapidly expand. Eventually a huge mill with five blast furnaces and a tube division was built along the Black River. In 1984 the furnaces were still operational and there were 2800 employees left, from five times that number, but soon after, the plant shut down. It would be bought by a series of owners over the years, but was probably shut more than it was open. American manufacturing is profitable. It just isn’t as profitable as finance and a lot of other things. If it wasn’t profitable then these mills wouldn’t keep surviving over the years, changing ownership and doing anything to hang on. The incidents below give you an idea of the things these mills must overcome. Because of a lack of mney leading to poor maintanence, the back-up generator for Blast Furnace #4 didn’t work, and the whole furnace was lost in an electrical blackout, over the city of Lorain.
“An August 14, 2003, blackout resulted in a fire and explosion that heavily damaged the No. 3 Blast Furnace. 25 An emergency generator failed to operate because of a lack of maintenance. After Republic could not restart the furnace after repairs were completed on the week of September 21, it began restarting its No. 4 Blast Furnace on September 29. The furnace, with a 3,200-ton-per-day capacity, 1 had not been used for some time because of its smaller size.” Here’s the site.