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5 Dead, 2 Injured in Anacortes Oil Refinery Blast
ANACORTES, Wash. —
A Tesoro Corp. oil refinery blast and fire that claimed five lives is now the subject of state and federal investigations. On Friday, April 2, 2010 at about 12:30 a.m. a blast shook houses and woke people miles away approximately 70 miles north of Seattle in Anacortes. Flames were shot as high as the refinery's tower before the blaze was extinguished about 90 minutes later.
In total, five people were killed and two were injured. Three men died at the scene and two women died later at a Seattle hospital. Two other men were badly burned. Matt Gumbel, 34, and Lew Janz, 41, were hospitalized in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Killed were Matthew C. Bowen, 31, of Arlington; Darrin J. Hoines, 43, of Ferndale; and Daniel J. Aldridge, 50, of Anacortes, according to the Skagit County coroner. 29-year-old Kathryn Powell of Burlington died at the hospital. Tesoro identified the fifth victim as 36-year-old Donna Van Dreumel, who died Friday night at Harborview. Van Dreumel had been employed at the plant since 2001. The company said employees were doing maintenance work on a unit that processes highly flammable liquid derived during the refining process.
There was little doubt as to the severity of the blast by those in surrounding areas. "We could tell this was horrific, this was huge," said Jan Taylor of La Conner, who felt the blast rock her motor home at the RV park across the bay.
This was the largest fatal refinery accident since a 2005 explosion at a BP American refinery in Texas killed 15 people and injured another 170. Six investigators with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board were dispatched to the scene, and the Washington Department of Labor and Industries launched an investigation.
Michael Silverstein, an assistant director at the state labor department, said the explosion and fire occurred in a bank of boilers. The blast occurred in a unit that was in the dangerous process of returning to operation. What makes returning a bank of boilers to operating dangerous is turning up heat and pressure, said Tesoro spokesman Greg Wright. "It's a volatile process, but we are diligent about being safe."
Because the boilers heat fluids to high temperatures under great pressure, they are "inherently vulnerable to events like this unless they are maintained and operated in a safe manner," Silverstein told a Friday afternoon news conference near the state capital of Olympia. Since there is still a lot of work to be done to figure out exactly what caused the blast, Silverstein said, "It's going to take us quite a while to really develop the full chronology and to look at the details...We want to do everything possible to help prevent this from ever happening again."
As a result, the Tesoro Company has also launched its own probe. The refinery was recently fined for safety violations amid what federal watchdogs call a troubling trend of serious accidents at refineries.
Last April, the San Antonio-based company was fined $85,700 last for what were called 17 “serious safety and health violations” which were defined as those with potential to cause death or serious physical injury. At that time, inspectors found 150 instances of deficiencies and said the company didn't ensure safe work practices as well as failed to update safety information when changes were made to equipment.
However, in November the state reached a settlement with Tesoro, requiring in part that the company correct the hazards and hire a third-party consultant to do a safety audit. The settlement reduced the total penalty to $12,250 and lowered the number of violations to three.
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