Utah and Texas have explosions

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php


Utah

Wednesday's explosion at the Silver Eagle refinery was the second there this year. A Jan. 12 explosion injured four workers — two employees and two contractors — who were clearing a line with nitrogen gas and bypassed a stabilizing mechanism. The gas forced fumes out of 440,000-gallon Tank 105, which was nearly full at the time. The fumes ignited in a flash fire, burning the men. That fire led to widespread evacuations in Woods Cross. Local officials began to work on how to improve communications with other officials and with the public. In a review of nearly every report looking into what went wrong, the answer was almost always communications, South Davis Metro Fire Chief Jim Rampton told the Woods Cross City Council in January. Residents received conflicting information during the management of the fire about what type of evacuation was necessary and where to go. Some residents were never informed, and neither were some council members. The fire department originally heard no one was injured, but then learned of the four injured men. Woods Cross Mayor Kent Parry said he believes Wednesday's explosion will test whether communication among city, emergency and refinery officials has improved. The refinery had been cited for 13 serious safety violations in recent years, including one that was deemed by inspectors to put workers at a high level of risk, according to officials with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. According to the OSHA Web site, the refinery was cited for 10 "serious" violations in 2005, two "serious" violations in 2004, and one in 2002. One of the 2005 violations was assigned a "gravity" rating of 10, meaning it carried the highest possible risk to workers' safety. The violation concerned "process safety management of hazardous chemicals," and OSHA initially assigned a penalty of $3,000. The issue was informally settled in March 2007, with the company paying a fine of $2,000, OSHA said.
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Texas

A natural gas pipeline explosion shook homes, melted window blinds and shot flames hundreds of feet into the air early Thursday near Amarillo, authorities said. Three people were injured in the blast, which was reported around 1 a.m. about a mile north of Bushland. The fire was contained by 5:30 a.m., said Potter County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Roger Short. Those injured suffered burns and were taken to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, Short said. He didn't provide details. The cause of the explosion hasn't been determined. "My home is about 20 miles something away and I could see the flames from my home, and that's substantial. The flames were huge," Short told The Associated Press. "You could her the roar of the flames 20 miles away." Gas was shut off to the line and most evacuated residents were being allowed to go home by 5:30 a.m., Short said. One house was destroyed and several others were damaged, he said. "The heat onto the homes, it did a lot of damage. You could see blinds inside the homes that were melted, it was hot, it was very hot," Short said. Bushland Middle School principal Mark Reasor said about 60 people who were evacuated took shelter at the school, but were returning home before dawn. He said classes would start one hour late. Crews from El Paso Natural Gas and Atmos Energy were at the scene. Bushland is a town of about 1,500, located 15 miles west of Amarillo.
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[valerief]

1. Annual health insurance deductibles are higher than these so-called penalties! nt

[ensho]

2. I hear you

nt

[Altoid_Cyclist]

3. $2,000 was the fine for one of the previous incidents?

:wow:

They don't put much of a value on people's safety if that's the fine for a gravity rating of "10".

I used to work for a local chemical manufacturer here and the management almost got us killed thanks to the lack of communication similar to the Utah incident in the article above.

We had a fire start in a chemical reactor one day. It wasn't as big as the Utah incident, but it would have been bad for the people in the vicinity of the reactor and the building that housed the reactor. After they had us leave the area until the fire was out, they looked out their window and said that it looked safe to go back into the building.

Just as I started back in, they yelled at us to run for it. It turned out that the fire wasn't actually out and it flared just as we got there.
The only thing that saved us was that one guy was right beside a fire extinguisher and as he said later; I just grabbed it and jumped on top of the opening of the reactor to put out the fire. As he said after he calmed down, "that was the stupidest thing that I've ever done."

The only reason that it happened in the first place was that maintenance dept. had been told that they couldn't work on the reactor while it was in use because they would have to remove the grounding wires.
Without telling anyone, they removed the grounding wires anyway and a dropped wrench started the fire.

Management had us go back in before the fire was out because we were running behind on the project and they couldn't afford a five minute delay to make sure that the fire was out.

The worst part... It was for a Monsanto product.

[ensho]

4. cripe, there is nothing like a near death incident

glad you made it

[Altoid_Cyclist]

5. I got laid off a few months later.

For some reason, when they called me back I said thanks but no thanks.
Stuff like that happened way too often at that place.

Another time another small explosion caused the contamination of thousands of pounds of candy at a candy factory just down the road.
We had to buy it and repackage it as toxic waste and have it hauled away.
You could actually smell the chemicals in the candy.

The same guy that put out the fire asked if he could take some of it to hand out an Halloween.

And no, I'm not kidding! This was the level of skilled workers handling chemicals that could take out just about the whole town within minutes.