CSB Holding Meeting to Hear from Anacortes Community
The agency's board won't vote on a draft final investigative report at the Jan. 30 meeting in Anacortes, Wash., but investigators will deliver a presentation about their draft report.
Almost four years after an April 2, 2010, explosion that killed seven workers at Tesoro Corporation's Anacortes Refinery, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation board’s members are nearing a vote on the draft final investigative report about it. A Jan. 30 meeting in Anacortes, Wash., had been announced for that vote, but a new agency notice says the meeting will instead be a community listening session, with no board vote.
The workers were fatally burned when a heat exchanger catastrophically failed, releasing hydrogen and naphtha, which ignited. The board posted a safety video one year after the explosion, in which CSB Chairman Rafeael Moure-Eraso reminds refinery owners and managers of best practices to prevent releases and accidents. In the video, he says the failed heat exchanger was nearly 40 years old when it failed and apparently had not been adequately maintained; the video shows a slide of microscopic cracks found in the metal by investigators after the explosion.
Free and open to the public, the listing session is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. PST at Anacortes High School.
The draft report will then be posted at www.csb.gov for 45 days, during which time the board will accept public comments on it.