Browse Sections

• Education
• Roadworks
• Shipman
• Special reports

Dad killed in freak factory blast

13/12/2006

A FREAK explosion killed a man at a firm which provides pyrotechnics and other special effects for TV and theatre companies.

Alan Cheetham, 55, died after a spark from the angle grinder the father-of-two was using at Firepower, in Lumb Lane, Droylsden, ignited a cloud of metallic dust and caused the blast.

Mr Cheetham, a retired electrical engineer of Buckingham Road, Droylsden had been helping his lifelong friend Stephen Tomkow, who owns the business. He was dismantling aluminium shelves for use in his garage.

Mr Tomkow told an inquest he was painting a chair and listening to the radio in another part of the windowless unit when he heard a bang and all the lights went out.

He found a torch to flick the switch back on in the light box and some of the lights came back on.

He said: "I saw him (Alan) slumped on the floor. I tried to lift him on my own, but then people came running in and told me not to move Alan and wait for the ambulance."

Firefighters took eight hours to extinguish the blaze which followed the explosion, which had been heard by people 100 metres away. Mr Tomkow added that there were no explosives on the premises at the time of the incident on 15 February.

Pathologist Dr Phillip Lumb gave the cause of death as multiple injuries.

Coroner John Pollard said: "Mr Cheetham went to remove the shelves and while they all came away easily, he found one where the bolts had rusted up. He decided to use the angle grinder to free it and when you have a quantity of metallic dust in the air, this becomes a combustible situation.

"I think that's precisely what happened and following the explosion, his legs became trapped. He instantaneously died at the point of the explosion. What happened was genuinely an accident."

Verdict: Accidental death.