'Operating upset' reported at No. 7 blast furnace

An unspecified "operating upset" took down Algoma Steel Inc.'s No. 7 blast furnace this past week.

"A safe and controlled restart of the furnace is well underway," Brenda Stenta, Algoma's manager of communications and branding, tells SooToday.

We contacted the company after a reader called us to report seeing heavy black smoke and large flames over the west-end steelmaking complex.

"This process includes the opening of the bleeders intermittently when pressure relief is required," Stenta said.

"Thankfully the upset coincided with a number of scheduled maintenance outages this week, which has enabled us to minimize overall impact to operations."

"We have maintained production at select downstream operations and continue to ship steel." 

"There were no injuries and there has been no impact to staffing levels," Stenta told us.

No. 7 blast furnace was opened in May of 1975, replaced the aging No. 3 and 4 furnaces.   

On March 9, billows of black smoke seen over the steel mill were blamed on a "temporary total loss of power to the steelworks," resulted in a loss of steam.

"This necessitated flaring on the coke batteries,” Stenta told us then.