Articles Posted in Industrial Accidents

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A serious Washington propane explosion last week injured five people and briefly placed a nearby school at risk, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

The Washington industrial accident took place near Mukilteo, in the Greater Seattle area. The news agency, citing a local fire district spokesperson, reported that “a 1,000 gallon tank was being loaded onto a truck to be taken to the construction site when it blew up.” Five people injured in the last were transported to a Seattle-area hospital. Students at a nearby elementary school were confined to their building for a time because of the possibility that debris might still be in the air.

As I have noted in earlier blogs, propane explosions are one of the most common types of industrial accidents in both Washington and Oregon. They are also one of the most readily preventable. Propane is an inherently unstable substance, but with proper procedures the dangers associated with it can be reduced significantly. The laws of Washington industrial accidents and Oregon industrial accidents are designed specifically to encourage people handling this and similar substances to exercise caution.

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A fatal accident earlier this month at an Eastern Oregon railroad crossing where collisions involving trains and vehicles have occurred in the past raises serious questions about corporate responsibility and road/rail safety.

According to Oregon Public Broadcasting (citing an article that originally appeared in the East Oregonian), a 63-year-old county worker died earlier this month “when a train struck a road grader on Canal Road south of Hermiston” in the Eastern part of the state. The worker was using the grader to spread gravel along one side of the tracks at the time of the accident. According to OPB “the train dragged the grader about 100 feet before it stopped.” The grader operator died at the scene of the Oregon train and car accident.

What makes this tragedy especially noteworthy are facts indicating it was ultimately preventable. As the article explains, at the crossing in question “motorists cannot see trains coming from the west until they emerge around a nearby curve. The crossing is uncontrolled, meaning it does not have traffic control arms.”

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An Idaho mine operator says it plans to contest citations and fines totaling $1 million levied by the federal government in the wake of a miner’s death earlier this year, the Associated Press reports in an article reprinted in The Oregonian. The violations that led to the citations, in turn, raise wrongful death questions and are a reminder for us here in Oregon that mine operators and other employers in hazardous industries have, at all times, both a legal and a moral obligation to do everything they can to keep employees safe.

The 53-year-old victim, a 12-year veteran of the mine according to AP, died last April after a cave-in at the place where he and his brother were working, approximately one mile underground. The two “had just finished watering down blasted-out rock and ore in the mine in the Idaho Panhandle before the collapse,” the news agency writes.

The miner’s job involved “drilling holes in a rock face, blasting it to rubble, then carting the debris to the surface to be processed into silver, lead and zinc.”

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Early reports that an Oregon industrial accident in North Portland left a worker critically injured have proven to be premature, according to The Oregonian. The newspaper, quoting an emergency services spokesman, reported that it was originally believed an explosion at SiC Processing had left a worker there with life-threatening injuries.

Several hours later it became clear that the victim was expected to make a “full and rapid recovery,” the paper reports.

The fact that the worker’s injuries were not as serious as was originally thought is a relief. But as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigates what the paper reports was a hydrogen blast a number of potential legal questions need to be considered.

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A recent announcement that insurance giant Allstate is buying the Esurance and Answer Financial brands from the smaller, less well-known, White Mountains Insurance Group raises several troubling questions.

According to an Associated Press article, Allstate expects to pay about $1 billion for the two brands. The acquisition will allow Allstate to broaden the offerings available under its corporate umbrella. AP cites an Allstate press release claiming “the deal will help it tap consumers who prefer certain brands along with consumers who want choices among insurance carriers.”

Leaving aside the dubious claim that one company’s marketing of its products under different names actually constitutes “choice” from a consumer’s perspective, customers might also want to consider what a company really has in mind when it makes acquisitions like this at below-market-value. Notably, White Mountain told the AP that the sale “will increase its book value by $80 per share.” Yet in trading after the deal was announced White Mountain’s stock rose by only $51 (about 15%) – indicating that the market thinks White Mountain should have gotten more money from Allstate for the deal to raise the company’s valuation as much as the White Mountain claims.

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The death of a Forest Grove resident in an Oregon explosion near Gaston raises critical safety issues. According to television station KGW, the blast at the Stimson Lumber Company also injured at least two other workers. The incident may fit Oregon’s definition of an industrial accident, depending on what investigators determine to be its precise details.

The station, quoting local fire department officials, reports that the accident took place when “a six-foot-tall hydraulic accumulator machine exploded… as three workers were trying to dismantle it.” The incident also led to other parts of the mill complex being evacuated, KGW notes, “as a safety precaution.” State OSHA officials were reportedly on-site to begin their investigation shortly after the accident occurred.

Complex incidents like this one may fit the definition of an Oregon industrial accident if the equipment involved can be shown to have been defective or if the suggested procedures for operating it offered inadequate safety protections. Oregon explosions and similar industrial accidents often require specialized legal knowledge to litigate, because of the complex – often overlapping – layers of accountability on and off the job site that need to be examined as part of any court proceeding.

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Earlier this week Notre Dame University wrapped-up its investigation of an accident last October in which a 20-year-old student was killed when the mobile lift from which he was filming football practice toppled over amidst high winds. In a news conference the school’s president announced, in effect, that because everyone involved was partly to blame for Declan Sullivan’s death no one in particular was actually responsible, according to an account by sports columnist Mike McGovern.

The idea that universal blame for this tragedy means no one is individually responsible is disturbing – especially since, in many respects, it clashes with the findings of Indiana’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration. That organization fined the university for a list of workplace safety violations related to the accident. According to McGovern: “Notre Dame was cited for failure to properly train the students, failure to have the lift serviced and inspected as required, failure to have an operator’s manual on the lift and failure to have warning labels displayed.” IOHSA has levied over $77,000 in fines for these violations, which the university is contesting.

At a more basic level, however, someone made the decision to send Sullivan up an unsafe lift “in known adverse conditions.” Someone decided that videotaping football practice overrode legitimate concerns about a student’s safety.

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A truck driver from California died last week in an Oregon truck accident on I-84 near Rufus, east of Portland, according to The Oregonian.

The victim, identified by police as Lino Domingo Lopez-Hernandez, died as a result of an unusual chain of events that began with a blowout on his own vehicle. Sorting out any resulting Oregon personal injury or wrongful death claims that may eventually arise from the accident is likely to be a complex business.

According to the newspaper, the accident began to unfold shortly after midnight last Thursday as Lopez-Hernandez was driving his big-rig west on I-84. The truck lost two tires and an axel for reasons that remain unclear. Lopez-Hernandez immediately pulled over. He was walking along the side of the road looking for the missing pieces of his truck when a pick-up, also traveling in the westbound lane, hit the truck debris, hurling it into Lopez-Hernandez. “The flying debris sent him over a guardrail and about 200 feet down an embankment, where authorities found his body,” The Oregonian reports.

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Nine months after an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine left 29 mine worker dead, the Wall Street Journal reports that many families torn apart by the tragedy remain unsure of their next legal steps forward. Their stories contain many lessons for Oregon families thrown into similarly tragic circumstances as the result of an Oregon wrongful death or industrial accident.

As the paper reports, within days of the mine explosion the board of Massey Energy Company, one of the largest and most powerful companies in West Virginia, offered each family a settlement: $3 million in compensation for the death, lost wages and lost companionship of their loved-one, in exchange for giving up any right to sue the company. The Journal reports that, at present, only seven families have agreed to the company’s settlement, and that “in at least two cases family members are at odds and plan to let a court decide which path they should take.”

For the families the choice is a painful one. As the Journal quotes one victim’s father, himself a miner, saying: “I don’t think it’s justifiable that they want to put a dollar sign on my boy.” As the article notes, the families of workers involved in other industrial accidents often face similarly agonizing choices.

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A scathing statement released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board cites “a series of improper actions” by a Grant’s Pass, Oregon contractor leading up to a 2008 crash that killed nine firefighters in California. According to a report in The Oregonian, the NTSB’s chairwoman found some actions by the company, Carson Helicopters, “so distressing that the NTSB has alerted the Department of Transportation’s inspector general to investigate in more detail, looking for possible criminal wrongdoing.”

The NTSB statement (see link below) paints a devastating picture of corporate negligence and deception. Referring to Carson, whose helicopters were contracted out to the US Forest Service for firefighting purposes, the NTSB writes: “The contractor’s actions included the intentional alteration of weight documents and performance charts and the use of unapproved performance calculations.”

Though the NTSB also found fault with actions by both the Forest Service and the Federal Aviation Administration, “Carson’s actions were so egregious – so egregious – that they have to go first,” NTSB member Robert Sumwalt told The Oregonian.

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