On this day in labor history the year was 2005.
That was the day 15 workers were killed and another 170 were seriously injured in an explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas.
Workers were re-starting a unit down for repairs.
As they filled a tower with gasoline, it overflowed, sending a geyser into the air.
The igniting hydrogen vapor cloud created a chain of explosions that destroyed the nearby trailers, housing temporary contract workers.
The explosion shed light on many key problems throughout the industry: the increasing use of contract workers, safety short cuts and qualitative lack of industrial process controls.
A 2007 Chemical Safety Board report found that “years of cost-cutting, poor worker training and a safety culture with “serious deficiencies” left the plant ‘vulnerable to catastrophe,’ but company leaders ignored the warning signs.”
OSHA fined BP $21.3 million and more, but ultimately settled for $13 million.
For years, the catastrophe was studied closely to eliminate the hazards.
But 10 years later, a 2015 joint investigative series by The Texas Tribune and Houston Chronicle found that “there is little evidence that the 15 lives lost on that March day bought much of anything: The death toll at U.S. refineries has barely slowed… At least 64 energy company employees and contractors were killed in the decade before the blast. At least 58 have died in the 10 years since…
The Department of Energy has tracked nearly 350 fires at refineries in the last eight years — almost one every week.
Refinery workers have gone on strike demanding, among other issues, an increased emphasis on safety.”
For the United Steelworkers, it is a daily fight to implement the critical safety actions the union developed in the aftermath of the blast.
March 25 - Centralia Coal Mine #5 Explodes
March 24 - Exxon Valdez Runs Aground
March 23 - Texas City Refinery Explosion Kills 15
March 22 - ERA Passes the Senate
March 21 - Truman Signs Loyalty Order
March 20 - Another Deadly Explosion
March 19 - Wartime President Pushes for Labor Peace
March 18 - Wartime Workers Betrayed
March 17 - The Hoggs Hollow Tragedy
March 16 - Big Bill Haywood Talks General Strike
March 15 - The Grapes of Wrath Opens in Theaters
March 14 - Remembering Walter Crane
March 13 - Ending Jim Crow on the Job
March 12 - OSHA Safety Incentives
March 11 - Raising Conditions for an Industry
March 10 - Radium Girls
March 9 - Striking the Mines
March 8 - IBEW Strikes to Win
March 7 - Work Faster! Work Faster!
March 6 - International Unemployed Day
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