LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – As the initial stages of an investigation into Tuesday’s Givaudan Color Sense factory explosion continue, the disaster brings back an eerily similar picture for the neighborhood.

One morning in April 2003, workers experienced the same horrible moment this week. Around 2 a.m., an explosion killed factory worker Louis Perry, 44.

“There was a loud explosion and the house shook,” another homeowner said. “And that’s initially what woke us up and we really didn’t know what was going on.”

The nearby color factory, owned at the time by DD Williamson, was a pile of twisted metal and ashes. The smell of ammonia lingered in the air, as 26,000 pounds of ammonia had leaked from an ammonia tank that fell during the explosion.

Perry was working on the company’s signature caramel coloring, alongside his brother, when things started to go very wrong. Perry sent his brother for help.

“The product was flowing into one of the tanks,” Louisville Fire reported in 2003. “That’s when he went to alert the maintenance guy and that’s when the explosion happened.”

Perry was killed instantly. His brother and three others who were working were not injured.

An eight-foot-tall feed tank had overheated. It was a problem Perry saw unfolding before his eyes, but he hadn’t been trained to solve it himself. Investigators would later determine that this was a significant problem within the company. No basic measures were put in place to prevent disaster.

At the end of an 11-month investigation, investigators presented their report at a public hearing. As detailed in transcripts of this meeting and in their final reportinvestigators discovered that the feed tank had already been damaged and the safety valve intended to prevent overheating was missing. The tank was also not registered in Kentucky and had not been inspected.

This failure was addressed in one of the 10 recommendations issued by the Chemical Safety and Health Inquiry Committee following the 2003 explosion.

Implementation of a hazard analysis program, overheating protection measures and written operating procedures were among other recommendations the company received and acted upon.

The series of failures created an accident officials say was “unnecessary.”

In 2021, the factory was bought by Givaudan.

On Tuesday, two workers were killed and 11 others injured in another explosion that destroyed the facility and sent debris into the nearby neighborhood. The power of the explosion alone caused significant damage to homes and businesses in the area. Many people in the community have called for the plant to pack up and leave the dense residential area. Similar calls were made in 2003, but the factory was rebuilt.

Residents and city officials acknowledged that the neighborhood has changed a lot since the plant found its home in Clifton. Calls were divided on whether to now move.

The Louisville Fire Department, ATF and emergency officials have all been working since the explosion to determine the cause. We contacted the LFD to ask how long the initial on-site investigation might take. LFD spokesperson Donovan Sims said there’s no real way of knowing how long this will last, but they don’t expect it to end this week.

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