The blast in Texas City that took the lives of 15 workers and caused injury to over a hundred others could be felt up to five miles away. But fallout from the blast is being felt all the way to Washington, where rumblings on the Hill are starting to push towards more stringent safety measures, different record keeping methods, and stiffer penalties for refineries, especially those who are willfully negligent.

Owned and operated by BP, the plant is the third largest in the U.S., employing 1,800 people and producing 3% of the country’s daily oil supply. And this is not the first major accident. Just six months previously in September 2004, two workers were killed and another seriously injured by superheated water. In fact the BP plant is the deadliest of America’s 149 oil refineries, accounting for 22 deaths in the past ten years. It reported 3,500 incidents (injury or spills) from 1990 to 2004.

If it were not for the high profile of the accident, these 15 workers would likely not be officially counted as a “refinery accident” because all of the laborers were contract workers. Typically in the industry, contract workers are never recorded in refinery accident reports, or are filed differently. Even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) categorizes contract workers differently, even if they have worked at the same plant for years.

Compounding the problem is that contract workers are often given the most dangerous jobs. In a preliminary report announced by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), one of the contributing causes seems to be workers who were unfamiliar with the systems, citing training and “human performance issues” as factors.

However the main finding is that several alarms that should have alerted the operators to coming disaster did not function properly. As a result, flammable hydrocarbons filled a tower to 120 feet before the explosion – a back-up emergency alarm was supposed to ring when that level reached just 10 feet.

BP stated that the faulty alarms in their facility were “certainly an issue” but stated that they believed it was not a “critical factor.”

Two senators including Ted Kennedy are introducing bills that would make willful negligence an automatic felony rather than a misdemeanor. And a representative from Georgia is introducing a similar bill to congress. But those bills may not get very far; both Senator Tom DeLay and Senator Ron Paul (of the district that includes Texas City) don’t see more regulation as the answer.

It is likely then that no matter how many people die or are injured at oil refineries, government will be slow to change the way it investigates and prosecutes negligence, leaving the worker to mostly fend for his own.

If your rights have been ignored by oil refineries and the government, and you have been injured on the job due to negligence, contact Jim S. Adler & Associates. We will help you fight for your rights and secure any compensation due to you. Don’t decide for yourself what caused the accident, let the experts at Jim S. Adler & Associates do that for you. Click the link on this page for a free, no obligation case review and get informed.

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