TEMPLE, Texas — On Tuesday, Oct. 1, Temple Fire and Rescue and EMS responded to a plant explosion at Delta Centrifugal on Center St. As crews were putting out the fire, they found five people severely burned, as of now they are recovering.
A Temple father was in the heat of all when he got the worst of the burns. He was on the roof trying to put out the fire when he fell and couldn't get up.
"He would literally get everyone out first," a family member of the victim said. "He is selfless. We are leaning on God to restore his health."
The man was then airlifted and is expected to be hospitalized for weeks at the Burn Center in San Antonio.
The other victims are recovering from their burns at the hospital too. Family members are asking to keep their loved ones in your thoughts and prayers.
6 News spoke to Temple Fire and Rescue Public Information's Officer, Santos Soto, who shared new developments.
"When the skin is injured like that with a burn, it holds heat for quite some time," Soto said. "If it's a first-degree burn versus a third-degree burn, you know, it's just going to be a varying time for those patients to recover. On the fire department side, you know we don't typically deal a lot with the families. We take care of their family members when they get hurt, but you know we're, we're still wishing them a speedy recovery."
When it comes to the fire, we know a furnace was involved and was filled with 10,000 lbs. of molten metal which was heated to 2,900 degrees. Temple Fire and Rescue says they haven't had any reports of an explosion happening before -- and safety precautions at industrial facilities like this are put in place.
"The large furnace full of metal, the temperatures, all of that's part of their normal manufacturing process," Soto added. "This was just a fluke instance that that caused something to malfunction, which caused that explosion to injure those five persons. The fire marshal and one of his deputies were back out there going over that furnace with the manufacturing facility in hopes of figuring out what caused that yesterday."
The cause of the explosion is currently unknown but stay with 6 News as we keep you updated.