There was never a formal, unbiased investigation such as now done by the CSB. The major investigations were done by various litigation teams. The total subrogation was $100M and the matter continued active for about 4 years. It finally settled w/o going to a jury trial.

The litigation was divided into parts

Cause & Origin

Propagation in

Piles

Bins

Drums

There were other minor parts, such as why a large, HP natural gas line was directly under the plant footprint.

I led the Propagation in Drums portion. If my memory serves, I spent five days in deposition.

I have presented a paper on PEPCON at an ACS National Meeting many years ago. I have also discussed it in several venues globally and will be presenting it again in October in SoCal (if accepted) as part of a presentation on the value of the CSB to current plant safety.

This was a real eye-opening incident. I happened to see it from the air as I was flying to NoCal. My wife saw the smoke from the Four Corners area where she was on a long distance bike ride. Over the years, I have met many people impacted by the explosions. There was a guy who was watching from about 8 miles away from his roof- and was blown off. Busted hip and leg. There was an airline employee who was hit in the face by the front door to her home from the large detonation. And many more.

On this anniversary of the incident, we should all pause to appreciate just how far we have come in plant safety, and look at today's headlines to realize how far we have to go.

Stay safe out there!

Neal

My union represented the PEPCON workers. Two of us flew out on the next flight to Las Vegas. Initial reports were that as many as a hundred workers were missing and feared killed. When we changed planes in Chicago, the reports were that about 30 were "confirmed" dead. In Las Vegas we got a car, talked our way past the authorities, and drove into Henderson to the local union office. There we learned it was two. I think we both burst into tears - grief for the two; relief for the 30.

The material was oxidizer - ammonium perchlorate - not fuel. But at high temperature it explosively recombines. For years the company had allowed it to permeate asphalt pads and roadways, creating a severe fire hazard. My co-investigator had visited the plant a year before, and had written a scathing report, but there was no PSM standard then, and neither Nevada OSHA nor the local authorities took it seriously.

When the fire started it quickly knocked out the fire suppression system.  At that point the end was inevitable. The workers evacuated the plant and got everybody out of the building next door - a marshmallow factory. The two who remained were the plant manager, who I guess thought he was honor-bound to stay, and the company comptroller, who worked in the on-site corporate headquarters, was in a wheelchair, and was overlooked by the other officials and staff. Most of the ammonium perchlorate was stored in aluminum tote bins on asphalt pads which burned hotly due to the embedded oxidizer. Those bins are what you see exploding in the video.

I assigned two people to the investigation, who spent several months in Henderson. We used the resulting accident report to lobby OSHA for a PSM standard, and when that failed, we used it to lobby Congress, which mandated the OSHA standard and the EPA RMP program in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. I'd like to think the report had a small part to play in that.

Mike Wright

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