Worker fatigue examined in Kleen blast
Authorities say the February 7 explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown happened as workers were using natural gas to clean out gas lines.
U.S. Chemical Safety Board lead investigator Donald Homstrom says some workers were working 12-hour shifts, including some of those involved in cleaning the gas lines.
Kleen Energy declined to comment.
Erik Dobratz, whose father Ray Dobratz was killed in the blast, said last month his father had told him he was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for six months.
Related News

What to know about the big climate change meeting in Katowice, Poland
WARSAW - Delegates from nearly 200 countries have assembled this month in Katowice, Poland — the heart of coal country — to try to move the ball forward on battling climate change.
It’s now the 24th annual meeting, or “COP” — conference of the parties — under the landmark U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the United States signed under then-President George H.W. Bush in 1992. More significantly, it’s the third such meeting since nations adopted the Paris climate agreement in 2015, widely seen at the time as a landmark moment in which, at last, developed and developing countries would…