Remembering An Accident: Norco, Louisiana Oil Refinery Explosion
On May 5, 1988, one of United States’ worst oil refinery explosions occurred in Norco, Louisiana. There were six employees that were killed and 42 local residents injured. The blast was said to have reached up to 3o miles away shattering windows, lifting roofs and sending a black fog over the entire town of Norco. Residents were forced to evacuate while officials died the fires down and gathered as much rubble as possible to recover any bodies. In order to discover the root cause of this disaster, the Federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration as well as the Environment Protection Agency came and investigated the scene to gather information. The only possible root cause they could find was the catalytic cracking unit, machine used to break down crude oil into gasoline, because it was at the center of the explosion, but there was no definite cause found. Overall, the amount of damage done cost Shell millions of dollars and set an incredible amount of fear into the residents.
Read here for the full story and direct quotes in the New York Times.
I was a federal OSHA copliance officer who visited that plant two months before this explosion happened. I was their on a complaint from the Union employees and I found that their complaints were valid. I worte my citations but told my area director that we must return back to the refinery and conduct a full inspection because I thought it was extremely usafe and there were so many serious hazards that I observied occuring on this site. My area directors said we were not going back to that site since we were short staffed and did not have the time to go back every time we seen some hazards. This plant exploded and killed these workes and their deaths could have been avoided. OSHA total citations to Shell were $3600.00
Did you go back after the explosion? Would you happen to have any photos of that event you are willing/able to share? I work for a company that creates training manuals for the petrochemical industry. I am trying to get an image of that event to use in our training materials. Getting the run-around from Shell themself. Cust-Service says to contact the media dept. The Media dept says they only respond to reporters and to contact Cust-Service. While the photo department has not returned any e-mails.
I was there that night and everyone knew what happened.. Shell published a letter afterwards explaining everything and basically taking blame.. I read the letter.. Nobody I saw had a camera back then, or cell phones, but YOU CAN’T BELIEVE THE DAMAGE CAUSED.. I worked in the main lab and remember running samples labeled 105,000 bbl test run, a couple days before the blast. The cat cracker was originally designed for 35,000 bbl/day.. They pushed and pushed it until it failed, redesign and redesign to make more money.. They knew they had a corrosion problem because they had an ammonia injection system right there on the elbows that blew out that night.. The 10″ line broke right at an elbow.. BOOM.. 35 seconds later.. Vapor cloud of epic proportions.. A survivor I talked to from across the street said the vapor cloud covered the entire Cat Cracker that he saw..