Refinery work is among the more dangerous of occupations. There have been several catastrophic explosion at these facilities in recent years. This explosion in Texas City, TX is one of the deadliest.
My company does accident investigations of worker incidents and to tell you the truth, it's sometimes a tough business. Industrial accidents are not pretty things to see, and add a death to it and it's a brutal state of affairs.
As an environmental health and safety consultant, I can get a facility to the point where no accidents can happen if the rules are followed. As anyone who has worked in the manufacturing or construction industry knows, following the rules is not always the case. I've learned the hard way that you just can't factor out the human element, which it seems 80% of the time is the cause of workplace injuries. I have colleagues who work for Jacobs and numerous other folks who work at refineries in my area.
My prayers go out to the families of the employees who were injured or killed.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Blast Kills 15 in Texas
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What's truely amazing to me is the revelation today that there was a flash fire at the same unit the previous day. I work for one of the (oil) majors, and when a flash fire happens during a turnaround, all work stops until we find out why it happened and take steps to insure it doesn't happen again. To be back at work the next day would be very, very fast. Too fast in most cases to properly review, decide on corrective action, and communicate it to the men doing the work.
With the limited info available today, it's a presumptuous to conclude that BP failed to properly investigate and rectify the previous incident. But it sure sounds damning.
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