The state has fined Intertape Polymer $11,250 for six safety violations found after a fatal boiler explosion in March.

The explosion at the Beltline Boulevard plant killed an employee who had been shoveling ash out of a coal-fired boiler.

Intertape officials could not be reached for comment on the report, released Wednesday by the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

On March 30, Tommy Jarvis, 47, worked the night shift at Intertape’s plant, where workers make duct and masking tape.

The company uses two boilers to generate electricity for the plant. Jarvis operated those boilers.

Around 8:30 p.m., a low pressure alarm went off, but Jarvis did not hear it, the report said. Another Intertape employee found Jarvis painting inside a second boiler and told him about the alarm. Jarvis told his co-worker he would be able to restore pressure and reset the alarm.

Shortly after 10:30 p.m., Jarvis called his wife, Betty, to say good night. The phone call was a ritual for Jarvis, who would discuss the day’s events and wish his wife a pleasant sleep. During the call, Jarvis told his wife about the alarm.

“He said he got it worked out and it was doing OK,” Betty Jarvis told The State Wednesday. “He said he was having difficulty with it that evening.”

He also told her he planned to shovel ash from the coal burning boiler after they hung up.

Twenty minutes later, the boiler’s firebox exploded.

Richland County fire investigators determined gas had built up in the firebox, and when Jarvis opened the door to scoop ashes, the rush of oxygen triggered the first explosion.

The boiler blew as a secondary explosion, the fire marshal’s report said. Jarvis died at the scene.

The explosions blew a dump-truck-sized boiler across four lanes of Shop Road and burning shrapnel across the property. The force shook houses miles away from the plant.

The hot debris started fires at the plant and at the vacant Cardinal Chemical Co. across the street. It also knocked out electricity to about 1,500 SCE&G customers.

After the explosion, the state safety investigation found a gate at the Intertape plant had been padlocked. The company was cited for blocking an escape route for employees who were evacuating, said Jim Knight, a labor department spokesman. The employees were able to break the lock and pass through the gate, so no one was injured, he said.

The investigation also found:

• Intertape’s boiler maintenance manual was deficient, lacking such guidelines as instructions on emergency operations and shutdown procedures.

• The company had not trained its employees on those requirements.

• Intertape should have known employees working around a coal-fired boiler were exposed to the possibility of an explosion and should have had a regular maintenance program for inspecting and overhauling the boilers, the report concluded.

• The company also failed to train its employees on those maintenance procedures, which are needed to keep a coal-fired boiler working.

• Finally, safety regulations require the company to get a permit every time an employee crawls inside a confined space such as a boiler. Those permits must be kept for a year. The company failed to do that, Knight said.

Betty Jarvis said she had not seen the investigator’s report but wasn’t surprised the company was cited for a lack of training.

“See, they wait until an accident happens, and then they do something about it,” Jarvis said. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

She said her husband often referred to his learning as “OJT,” or on-the-job-training. His use of the acronym reflected his Marine Corps career.

Betty Jarvis said her husband’s military training made him a cautious employee at Intertape, where he had worked for eight years. Even though the company sent Tommy Jarvis to boiler training in North Carolina and he had attended Midlands Technical College, Betty Jarvis said, she feels her husband’s training was slight.

“Everybody wants to pinch here and pinch there and not worry about the safety of other people,” she said. “They just want to save an almighty dollar.”

Tommy Jarvis’ death led the S.C. General Assembly to pass a law requiring regular boiler inspections. South Carolina was the last state to require inspections.

However, Intertape’s boilers had passed a July 2004 inspection. Knight said the new law probably would not have made a difference in the Intertape accident.

As for Intertape, the accident hurt the company’s second-quarter financial results. Intertape reported an increase in sales but a drop in net earnings when compared to the same period in 2004. The company blamed the decreased earnings on $1.1 million associated with the industrial accident in Columbia and plant closings in other locations.

The company said its costs at the Columbia plant were due to insurance deductibles.

Intertape Polymer’s shares closed Wednesday at $7.22, down 3.73 percent.

Reach Phillips at (803) 771-8307 or nophillips@thestate.com.