Lost a good friend on this day back in 2007. Scott Gallagher & I had gone through college together. He & his wife moved to Houston a few years after I’d moved there, so got to spend more time together.
Scott moved back to Florida in the late 80s, settling in Jacksonville. Created the company, T2, which made gasoline additives.
Miss you, Scott.
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JACKSONVILLE, Florida (CNN) – Four people were killed and several injured after an explosion Wednesday at a chemical plant sent a thick plume of smoke over a section of Jacksonville, authorities said.
A thick plume of smoke rises Wednesday at a chemical plant in Jacksonville, Florida.
"Literally, it's a hellish inferno. There is no other way to describe it," said Fire Department spokesman Tom Francis.
Fourteen people were hospitalized after the blast at the T2 Lab on Faye Road, in an industrial area on the waterfront in north Jacksonville, Francis said.
Officials initially ordered an evacuation of nearby businesses, but by 4 p.m. the order had been lifted after tests of the air found no toxicity, Francis said.
Firefighters were still battling hot spots, and the effort will be going on for "quite some time," he said.
Six of those injured were transported to Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, hospital spokeswoman Kelly Brockmeier said. A Shands official said the hospital incident command system had been activated -- something done to put the staff in high alert in anticipation of trauma patients.
A woman who answered the T2 Lab's 24-hour facility emergency phone said the plant manufactures ecotane, a gasoline additive that reduces tailpipe emissions, according to the laboratory's Web site.
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Quite a history. Sorry you lost your friend.