It was the kind of job that workers at the Big Bend power plant do routinely, and one done countless times in the nearly 35 years that senior plant operator Michael McCort had worked at Tampa Electric.
But company executives said something went tragically wrong Thursday as McCort, 60, and at least five employees working for outside contractors tried to unplug a tank containing molten slag that can reach temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees.
Slag gushed from the tank, falling onto the workers below. The flow — "like what comes out of a volcano," one expert said — covered the floor six inches deep and 40 feet across.
McCort, of Riverview, was killed along with contractor employee Christopher Irvin, 40, of Tampa. Another four contractor employees were hospitalized with life-threatening burns or other injuries: Antonio Navarrete, 21, and Armando J. Perez, 56, both of Wimauma; and two Tampa men related by marriage, Frank Lee Jones, 55, and his stepson, Gary Marine Jr., 32.