Shell/Motiva reports three accidents this week

By ANGELA WEAVER
Port Arthur News Staff Writer
09/19/2003

A series of incidents at Motiva Enterprises in the past week have sent three workers to the hospital. One contractor suffered first and second degree burns and was treated at Galveston's UTMB burn center, but is back on the job.

"There was a contractor burned while they were removing catalyst," Bill Wimberley, the refinery's environmental director, said. "They were doing maintenance on it and a contractor was burned with hot catalyst and sent to the hospital."

The worker was originally sent to Christus St. Mary's by Motiva, but the hospital could not assess his burns so they shipped him to UTMB Galveston, Bill Wimberley, manager of Sustainable Development for Motiva, said. The worker suffered first and second degree burns and was treated, kept overnight for observation and released the next day.

"He is back at work. The only day he missed was to go back to Galveston to get discharged to get cleared for work," Wimberley said.

Sue Parsley, spokesperson for Motiva, said another employee was slightly injured last week when a safety worker backed into his bicycle. She said the employee was sent to the hospital "to get checked out," but later returned to work.

Two small fires also erupted at the plant in the last week. Parsley said one was near the Praxair unit currently under construction at Motiva, but was simply a utility pole that caught fire. Port Arthur fire fighters put out that blaze, but another small fire on Saturday on a flange was extinguished quickly by operators.

Yet another worker was injured when sulfuric acid leaked from a pressurized line maintenance workers were attempting to repair.

"They knew they had a bad line and the operator was going to open up the line to pressurize it to show maintenance where the leak was and the leak was right next to the valve," Wimberley said. "The line was insulated and a little acid sprayed out and caught him."

The maintenance worker was sent to a local hospital for precaution, but was released and returned to work.

Finally, an underground pipeline carrying aviation fuel ruptured, but Parsley said the spill was completely contained within a concrete ditch in the facility.

"It's all cleaned up. All proper notifications were made. It was just in the refinery and of no danger to the community," she said.

Wimberley said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as well as the National Response Center, was notified of the spill. Each incident, he said, is being fully investigated and a plan is in place to assure corrective action is taken and tracked.

"Every one of these incidents is being investigated. The operator that was hit by the truck, the flange fire, the pole fire and the operator sprayed with acid," Wimberley said. "Every one (incident) has its own investigation team to determine what happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.

"If there are any action items, they are put on the data base here and any corrective action items are assigned to specific people to get fixed and the status is reviewed each month," he said.

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