Deadly event cost the lives of four people

Ten years ago, on Friday 17 July 2015, at around 9 am, there was a massive explosion at the wood treatment plant at Bosley Mill.

The mill, situated just outside Bosley village, was run by Wood Treatment Ltd, which manufactured a variety of wood fibre, wood flour, and wood powder products.

Four of the 50-strong workforce lost their lives in that explosion: Derek Moore, (Derek) Will Barks, Dorothy Bailey and Jason Shingler.

As fire crews raced to the site, they may have anticipated a major event, but probably not the scene of mass destruction that had occurred at the wood flour mill.

A huge fire engulfed the wood flour mill buildings. A crowd stood in the road, dazed and shell-shocked. There were obvious casualties: some people were receiving medical care while others walked around with visible burn injuries.

One Cheshire Fire and Rescue officer described the scene at Wood Treatment ltd, wood flour mill as something “like out of the movies.”

A member of the Urban Search and Rescue team was equally shocked. “The scale of the incident…is unprecedented in this country in the last 10 years,” he later said.

Many received life-changing injuries. The body of Jason Shingler was never recovered.

The force of the explosion and the ensuing fire devastated large parts of the mill buildings. Search and rescue operations mounted over the course of the next weeks sought to locate any survivors and, when they found none, to retrieve the bodies.

The workforce at Bosley Mill included many members of the same families; the shock and grief at the loss of four people – mother, sister, aunt, husbands, fathers, brothers, cousins and friends – and the serious injuries to others reverberated widely at the time continues to this day.

.

It took several days before the fires were suppressed enough, for the investigators and rescue teams health and safety, to enter the site of this massive explosion. By that point, the wood flour mill at Wood Treatment ltd was completely destroyed by at least three explosions, from wood dust and and a dust cloud. A primary dust explosion occurred within the process, stirring up previously settled dust within the mill, leading to a large secondary dust explosion.

.

More than 800 tons of rubble were moved and police divers were deployed to underground culverts in an attempt to find missing people alive. Firefighters didn’t leave the wood dust explosion site for over a month. 

Macclesfield MP, David Rutley, spent time at the site. He later recalled it was “like a war zone” and described the tragedy as the “darkest day” yet in his time as MP.

A fund for the victims and their families was set up by a local councillor. While this measure helped address some of the financial losses, it did not (and never could) compensate for the lives of the four people lost. 

.