One dead in primer explosion at Olin plant in Illinois

[HFS]

According to Fox News, a truck driver was killed in an explosion of shotgun primers Thursday afternoon at the in East Alton, Illinois.
Must be a big facility. The story say the 60 y.o. man was driving "a semitrailer loaded with shotgun shell primers that exploded while being transported inside the Winchester ammunition plant..."
Prayers to the man's loved ones.

Worker killed in Illinois ammo factory blast identified

Oscar "Zeke" Bettorf, 60, has been identified as the sole victim of a Thursday explosion at East Alton, Illinois' Winchester ammunition plant.

www.foxnews.com

 

[retrieverman]

Sounds like another meat plant situation. The powers that be don’t want primers to come back in stock.

 

[OKCHunter]

Sorry for the loss of life. That incident will likely cause a shortage of Winchester shotshells for a year or more while an investigation is done and further safeguards are put into place. As far as 209 primers being available to the reloader, I haven’t seen new Winchester primers in the last couple of years. Frankly, Cheddite 209 primers perform nearly identical to Winchester, are readily available, less expensive, and run through my Spolar reloader better.

 

[dennishoddy]

There has to be more information about what caused the explosion. Primers do not auto-ignite.
Waiting to hear the full story.

 

[swampratt]

First off Prayers for the family.

Second order is anyone who has loaded with Federal primers notice the box and packaging is HUGE compared to CCI.

Care to know why such huge packaging.
They had some go off years ago during transport so packaging was changed to the plastic containers that store them on their sides in their own cavity.

Could be these were stacked too deep or hit a heavy bump and pressure set some soft primers off.

Federal 210M is a very soft primer .
I have done some experiments with primer and those are easy to set off.

Tubular magazine pointy bullet will set those Federals off But I have tried and tried to make a pointy plastic tip or pointy lead tip set off a cci and can't do it.

Chucked primed empty case in a vise and hit a pointy bullet against primer with a hammer to try and make them go off.

 

[GnometownHero]

I was a contractor at Lake City AAP. One of their primer mix guys blew himself up about 50yds from where we were working. The mix house has super strong walls and a very light roof so he basically made himself into a mortar round and it spread his parts all over the area.