Injured Firefighters Get $19.5 Million

NEWTON, Mass. — Ten firefighters who were badly hurt in a 1993 explosion at a chemical plant have settled with the owner for $19.5 million.

The disaster at H.C. Starck Inc. disabled nearly a third of Newton’s active-duty firefighters in a flash. Seven were permanently disfigured; two of them had their ears burned; one man was blinded.

“None of them can ever be firefighters again,” Neil Sugarman, a lawyer for the firefighters, said Friday. Last year, the company, a subsidiary of Bayer AG of Germany, pleaded guilty to criminal negligence and paid a $1.4-million fine in connection with the explosion, which occurred while firefighters were trying to smother a fire in a sodium drum.