Federal investigators found many opportunities were missed that could have prevented the Sept 2022 deaths of brothers Ben and Max Morrissey, 32 and 34 years old, who succumbed to fire-related injuries hours after they were caught in an evening explosion at a bp-operated refinery in Ohio.
Our deep dive in The Wall Street Journal nine months ago is linked below in comments, along with an episode of The Journal podcast with powerful voices from people who lived through that day.
For hours before the accident, BP supervisors downplayed refinery employees' concerns and only supported production shutdowns investigators described as too little, too late.
In the months before the accident, during a major refinery turnaround--an intensive maintenance operation that shut down much of the facility--BP opted not to perform some work that would have rectified problems that internal records show the company knew about. Some of that work involved key pressure valves that failed on the day of the accident.
(Our story last year went into the valve malfunctions--in a level of detail not publicly known at the time--and also the relentless barrage of alarms that hit control-room operators as they tried to wrestle an out-of-control refinery into submission. They were overwhelmed. It didn't work.)
Days after the 2022 turnaround ended, BP announced it would sell its 50% stake in the refinery. It was the following month that the explosion and fire ripped through the century-old facility in Oregon, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo.
This is important reading about lessons not learned, insufficient training, safety controls that missed the mark--how it all went so wrong.
bp this month agreed to pay $125,000 to settle violations identified by OSHA related to the accident. It had contested the violations.
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4moIn this story we can see how the completion of a project can be done on time and under budget even it was hampered by sudden pandemic. In another part of the earth a project was signed between owner and contractor but there was no mobilization for 7-8 months. Only after internal Joint Operation Agreement was discussed and signed the moving-in process was commenced. But that wasn't the end of story. Even it wasn't hampered by pandemic the project had to deal with land problems because there are so many obstacles like graves, residential areas, historical monuments, immovable local government's assets and so on which automatically hampered the completion time of this construction. Even it was planned by hi-tech system including the material calculation but in practice from 4 sacks of cement that had to be used based on material calculation only 2 were used while the other 2 were not used and the money that should be used to buy the other 2 sacks went nowhere to be found (hey, story like this is common in this another part of the world). And it was not just happened to cement but also happened to pole, lamp, steel, you name it. Construction failure is common and accident is just a matter of time. PS.: True story.