For six days following the trial’s decree, the South Foundry district echoed with the sharp, rhythmic ringing of sledgehammers, cold chisels, and socket wrenches.
A district-wide heavy-duty purge was underway. Work crews of veteran mechanics and volunteer lightermen, led by Renn Tal and Nessa Vale, moved systematically through all six blast fire complexes, the rolling mills, and the Central Sluice House.
Tomas Reed walked the outer edge of Blast Furnace Number Four, his ash-wood pack frame loaded with approved replacement studs, asbestos rubber rings, and containers of graphite thread-grease. His left arm rested securely in its linen-and-ash splint, the skin healing steadily under Nurse Venn’s daily dressing. Even so, the stiffness in his thumb and index finger remained an unmoving reminder of the narrow high walkway struggle.
Beneath the fire hearth, in the very chamber where the blowout had occurred eighteen years before, Tal stood before the newly erected pipe hub.
The shattered muck-iron chest had been cut away with oxy-hydrogen torches and removed to the scrap heaps. In its place stood a brand-new pipe hub chest of rolled five-eighths-inch boilerplate steel, riveted with double-row high-pressure rivets and secured to the granite piers with two-inch forged anchor bolts.
Mounted upon the upper delivery neck sat the newly cast relief valve.
