LOUISVILLE, Ky. — “I felt, heard and saw this massive plume of yellow smoke and debris go hundreds of feet in the air right outside my window,” Hannah Nitzken told WHAS-TV News, describing the Nov. 12 explosion at the Givaudan Sense Colour plant. She lives 300 feet from the factory in the Clifton neighborhood here.
The explosion sent shrapnel flying into the densely populated neighborhood, landing in yards and on roofs. Some residents have had to move out of their homes.
The Givaudan plant here produces food colorings. A cooker explosion was the cause of the accident, the Louisville office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told the press Nov. 18. Some workers in the plant had warned the company about an overheating cooker.
Two workers were killed in the explosion, Austin Jaggers, 29, and Kevens Dawson Jr., 49. At least 11 workers were injured and taken to area hospitals.
Community residents confronted Ann Leonard, president of the Givaudan Sense Colour Business Unit, at a Nov. 18 meeting about the cause of the explosion, demanding the company do more to help people there.
“We were in a blast zone,” one person said. “The explosion was so loud it could be heard for miles. Don’t we all have to have our hearing checked?” Eunice Ellis said her family is homeless because of the blast. “I need help. We all need help.”
“This is the third incident” involving the plant, said Bella Schweizer. “How can we trust anything that you are saying without any action to back it up?” Schweizer circulated a petition she presented to the Louisville Metro Council demanding Givaudan be barred from rebuilding its factory in any residential neighborhood.
Nick Simon, who owns property across the street from the plant, proposed Givaudan tear down the damaged building and build a park, “and name it after the two men you killed.”
The family of Kevens Dawson Jr., along with attorney Benjamin Crump, spoke at a press conference the same day. Dawson was left under the collapsed building for over eight hours after Givaudan officials told rescuers all the workers were accounted for. Mailaika Watson, Dawson’s girlfriend, said that after she went to three area hospitals looking for him, she became convinced he was still in the plant and went back to find him herself. Eventually firefighters were sent back into the building and found his body at 11:30 p.m.
Dawson’s son, Kevens Dawson III, said his father was a “man of principle, respect and love. All he wanted to do is provide and work hard and I just can’t help feeling that my father worked himself to death. We’re very devastated and we want answers. We want justice.”
In the first nine months of 2024 Givaudan — a Swiss-owned producer of fragrances, cosmetics and food coloring — reported sales of 5.6 billion Swiss francs ($6.3 billion). In 2023 its net income was almost $1 billion.
In April 2003, when the plant was operated by D.D. Williamson & Co., an over-pressurized feed tank exploded, killing 44-year-old Louis Perry and triggering a massive release of aqua ammonia. In 1996 a railroad car containing liquid ammonium bisulfate overheated as it sat near the plant and blew its lid, blanketing the surrounding neighborhood with the toxic chemical.
Ned Measel, the Socialist Workers Party 2024 candidate for U.S. Congress from Cincinnati and member of UNITE HERE Local 24, attended the Nov. 18 meeting. “Workers in plants and on the rails, as well as the communities they’re in, face the bosses’ potentially catastrophic assault on safety every day,” he told the Militant. “The best defense for us is to organize a union at every workplace and for workers to take control of production and safety. No worker should die on the job and no one in the neighborhood should have their health and home threatened.”