Death in April

By Will Parry

April brought to U.S. industrial workers a springtime harvest of death, and to their families and communities a bitter season of grief.

In Anacortes on April 2, at the Tesoro refinery, five workers were killed in an explosion and fire. Two other workers failed to survive severe burns.

Three days later, 29 coal miners died in an explosion and fire in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. (See story on page 5.)

On April 20, a fire and explosion aboard the huge Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana injured 17 workers and left another 11 workers missing. At our deadline, workers were desperately trying to contain an environmentally disastrous spill.

Federal regulators and union officials have warned for years that a pattern of safety violations at oil refineries would lead to such tragedies as the explosion at Tesoro’s Anacortes facility. That refinery was cited a year ago for 17 “serious” safety violations that posed a risk of death or serious injury to workers, according to the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.

A national program of intensified scrutiny of refineries was undertaken after an explosion in 2005 killed 15 workers at a BP refinery in Texas. Despite the increased inspections, regulators say the industry isn’t doing enough.

“The petroleum industry has a long way to go before we can feel comfortable that workers there are being adequately protected,” said David Michaels, head of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

John Bresland, chairman of the federal Chemical Safety Board, charged with investigating such disasters, said the entire industry needs a sharper emphasis on safety. “It’s so frustrating because we keep seeing these accidents,” Bresland said. “They all have different reasons, but it’s all about day-in and day-out attention to detail.”

Daniel Horowitz, a Chemical Safety Board spokesman, said the agency has seen a “disproportionate” number of accidents among the nation’s 150 refineries, compared with thousands of other types of chemical plants dealing with hazardous materials.

All production facilities, whatever the industry, are under unremitting pressure to produce. Production means profit, and any interruption of production cuts into profit.

And the big bosses don’t like that.

Virtually very production facility has a safety program. Safety meetings are held. Safety inspections are made. Safety rules are posted. Recognition is given to departments with the highest number of accident-free days. No doubt the Tesoro refinery has such a program in place.

Despite all that, terrible events continue to cost workers’ lives and to leave their families bereaved. What’s behind these repeated human tragedies?

In real life, safety gives way to shortcuts. Essential maintenance is postponed, and postponed again, because maintenance requires the shutdown of equipment. Over the life of an industrial plant, potential trouble spots multiply. Each one is an industrial time bomb, waiting to be triggered by the first deadly confluence of events.

“The general public has no idea what’s going on with these facilities,” said Kim Nibarger, a health and safety expert with the United Steelworkers. “If they did, they’d be scared half to death.”

Earlier this year, the Steelworkers mailed out a poster to members showing scenes from the fires that rocked a Houston plant in 1989. The poster carried a prophetic warning that “it’s only a matter of time” before more workers would die in another serious refinery fire or explosion.

Federal statistics reveal that every workday, on average, an estimated 177 workers die from work-related causes – 13 from traumatic injuries, 164 from occupational diseases. Each of these deaths is as heartbreaking and unnecessary as those in Anacortes and West Virginia. But unless there are multiple deaths, they go unreported in the media.

Back to Home