sahen said:
Jinx 2 said:
Bearitto said:
Forest Bueller_bf said:
1) You do realize there are already regulations that require safe work environments in the United States.
2) Why take an off based shot at prayer.
Do you folks have a template for every single tragedy that happens to aim at something that is not the real issue.
It really is sickening, isn't it? Accidents happen (As they do) and the first go to is 'More Government!!! Less Religion!!!'
No, the immediate response was that better regulations AND actual enforcement are needed to avoid tragedies like this. And it's not the first such industrial accident: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/24/houston-explosion-texas-buildings-shake-debris-falls-streets-blocked/4562231002/
Houston Fire Chief Sam Pea said the explosion erupted at a warehouse at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, a machining and manufacturing company that refurbishes plastic pallets. It was spewing Polypropylene, which is used to make plastic, officials said.
The building was reduced to burning rubble and smoldering debris.
The immediate focus of emergency crews was to shut off a valve that spewed chemicals for several hours.
...
This part of Texas is home to the highest concentration of oil refineries in the nation and has experienced a series of explosions in recent years, according to the Associated Press. Last July, an explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown, east of Houston, left more than dozen people with minor injuries and put nearby residents under a shelter-in-place advisory for three hours.
In December, two blasts in the coastal city of Port Neches shattered windows and ripped the doors from nearby homes.
It is horrible when something like this happens. I work in the plants and it is extremely sad that it got to this point that someone died.
That said lumping in an area that is about 120 miles long as the same area to say there have been multiple explosions seems a bit extreme. Jersery Village is over 40 miles from Baytown. Port Neches is another 70+ miles East of Baytown.
Also, they talk about the highest concentration of Oil Refineries in the area. Watson Grinding is refurbishing plastic pellets. That has nothing to do with Oil Refining - if anything they are closer to a recycling plant than an Oil Refinery. Also, the 2 examples they listed in Baytown and Port Neches where not Oil Refining incidents. ExxonMobil has a combined Refinery and Chem Plant and their explosion happened in the Chemical Plant. Port Neches was at a company making rubber. Heck, only one of those incidents happened at company that even has an Oil Refiniery at all.
Should everything be done to keep this stuff from happening? Yes, it should, but to lump every explosion on the gulf coast in to one industry to make it seem like the same people are doing this over and over is dishonest. Folks that work out of the industry have no idea how many government regulations are already in place. We will see what the investigation of Watson yields, but to automatically assume more government regulation would fix the issue is an incredibly naive position to take.
Thanks for a civil, credible and substantive response.
It honestly seems to me that the prevailing attitude is: safety and environmental concerns be damned. Boeing is selling planes with a known flaw that kills people and such tremendous quality control issues that Boeing employees in the know stated they wouldn't put their family members on them.
That failure was both corporate and with the FAA. Two men are killed and two seriously injured in an explosion at a shipbuilder, VT Halter Marine, and th
e fine is only $1.3 million (I think they ended up paying less than $1 million) while
the same shipbuilder is later assessed more than $4 million of liability in a jury verdict as a result of a crane accident that blinded one employee but is exempt being sued for it because the worker received worker's comp. Remedies for employees and consumers are either too little too late or non-existent. There's tremendous pressure not to report safety issues or complain about safety violations.
One of the reasons you have regulations and the rule of law is that the economy grinds to a halt if people think planes, factories, power plants etc. are unsafe (and if they think government, judges and regulators are corrupt and undependable). Nuclear power is a good example. We SHOULD be pursuing nuclear power, but thanks to Chernobyl, ***ushima and 3-mile Island, we won't, because people don't trust the public and private actors who would be involved in designing and building the plants and the staff ultimately hired to run the plant and make sure it's safe to honestly assess and address safety risks. And, given an environment where the safety calculus is "do the absolute minimum you can get away with doing," that distrust is totally merited.
So how do you get people to be honest about the need for safety, the need for oversight and the need to pay for both of those up front because clean-up is a whole lot more expensive, and--i
n cases like the BP oil spill--never complete/completely effective and also d
angerous for the people who do the dirty work.
