CTA Report, Draft 1, ISP Review - US Chemical Safety and Hazard ...

3.0 Facility Description
3.1 CTA Acoustics Corbin Facility
The 302,000-square-foot CTA facility is located just outside the Corbin city limits in Laurel County,
Kentucky. The facility employed 561 full-time personnel at the time of the incident. Operations
employees worked rotating 12-hour shifts, while the mechanical department and administrative support
staff worked 5-day, 8-hour shifts.
CTA is a privately held company, with a technical and sales office in Madison Heights, Michigan. The
Corbin facility is its only manufacturing plant. At the time of the incident, CTA had annual sales of
$80 to $90 million.
3.2 Surrounding Community
The neighborhood surrounding the CTA facility is part of an unincorporated community consisting of
houses, apartments, and trailer homes. A nursing home, medical clinic, and elementary school are located
within one mile of the plant. On the day of the incident, a number of people living or working in the area
were evacuated, but no injuries to the public were reported. As a precaution, officials shut down 12 miles
of Interstate 75, located approximately 0.5 mile west of the facility.
3.3 History of the Plant
CertainTeed Corporation—a manufacturer of insulation, roofing, siding, windows, and related products—
built the Corbin plant in 1972 and operated it for 20 years. Headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania,
CertainTeed employs 7,000 people at 40 manufacturing facilities throughout the United States. In 1988,
CertainTeed became a wholly owned subsidiary of Saint-Gobain. Saint-Gobain employs approximately
26,000 people in North America and more than 170,000 people in 46 countries worldwide. Saint-
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