The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Delek Refining Ltd. in Tyler with one alleged willful and 29 alleged serious violations after a fire and explosion claimed the lives of two workers and injured three others.
The total fines that OSHA has assessed on the company is $217,000.00 and in my opinion that is nothing to sneeze at. In my humble opinion that is precisely what OSHA has to do in order to get companies to comply with the law. Otherwise they will just consider this part of business and go on and continue to operate in an unsafe way.
The worker in this country has a voice and I think this voice is OSHA. Someone has to keep an eye on companies who operate in this country to keep our workers safe and in my opinion OSHA does a fair job at what they do. One thing however that would make it easier is to be better funded by the United States Government.
The Process Safety Management standard, from OSHA, contains specific requirements which are essential to the safety and health of workers in the petroleum refining industry, and it is crucial that employers follow these safety and health requirements. OSHA’s director believes that if this had been done in this case, lives may have been saved.
Serious citations are issued by OSHA when death or serious injury could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known and there were 29 of these violations. In this case they were in violation of OSHA Process Safety Management standards including electrical, benzene, asbestos and portable fire extinguisher standards.
In this accident Flammable vapors were ignited after a Naphtha, which is a flammable liquid, discharge line ruptured, killing two workers and injuring three others. The investigation found a willful violation since they failed to adequately maintain and repair the processing equipment. In OSHA terms a a willful violation is one that is committed with intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to, the requirements of the OSHA Standard.
Why do companies continue to violate standards is beyond our comprehension since it is a known fact that if standards are broken people may die. So that you may know that this is not a new thing take a look at the following link and read this article that happened in 1922.
Radium Girls After you read this article you will understand this question “What are the limits of the human heart for evil”.
Thanks and for goodness sake do what is right.
Joe Russell
