Liberty's Blog

Staffing Problems Contributed To BP Plant Blast

The lawyers, victims, and Click2Houston believe that staffing issues may contributed to the Texas City Refinery explosion. BP had been trimming down employees, using attrition and early retirement offers. Many of the positions that have been eliminated are older experianced staff. One would naturally wonder if this didn't have something to do with the explosion.

Staffing problems, lack of supervision and communication breakdown contributed to a blast that killed 15 people and injured more than 100 at a Texas City BP refinery in March, two surviving workers allege in a lawsuit.

Problems at the plant included understaffing in a critical control room and undertrained or inexperienced workers and personnel who didn't perform their job adequately in the area that exploded, according to the amended suit filed Wednesday in Galveston County State District Court.

It was filed on behalf of Miguel Arenazas and David Crow, JE Merit contractors who suffered broken backs in the blast while assigned to work maintenance turnaround of a nearby unit.

"Our continued investigation leads us to believe that there was a systematic breakdown in communications, in operator training and in management supervision of the startup procedures," said the workers' Houston lawyer, Rob Ammons.

Although the suits seem to be all aimed at deep pocketed BP. There could be some partial liability with JE Merit, the contracting company. Communication is at least a two way process, and they should have had some input on plant startup, allocation of manpower, and location of of equipment, and temporary buildings. Ultimatly it is BP's responcibility to ensure communication and safe startup of the plant. BP isn't talking and is in denial of any wrong doing. This isn't how one learns from thier mistakes.

BP spokesman Hugh Depland declined to comment on lawsuit. The company has denied negligence in the blast.

Supervision seems to be missing and there was no evacuation alarm when the hydrocarbons were released. The contractors claim they weren't even aware of the impending startup.

The supervisor of the refinery unit that exploded wasn't present during the section's startup, which is considered a dangerous time in a plant's operations, the lawsuit said. The two workers also claim a qualified substitute wasn't left in charge, key operators were allowed to leave the refinery at the startup time and only one board operator was assigned to the control room.

Crow is among workers who say they didn't know the startup was happening and heard no warning alarms. The workers question why they and other nonessential employees were allowed to be at the site during the startup.

They also question why a trailer was placed so close to the isomerization unit before it exploded.

posted by Liberty @ 9:10 AM