1990 ARCO explosion
An explosion at the ARCO Chemical Channelview, Texas petrochemical plant killed 17 people and injured five others on July 5, 1990. It was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in the history of the Greater Houston area.
The land along the Houston Ship Channel is a heavily industrialized area, with numerous oil refineries. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several large industrial disasters occurred in the area, with the largest being the Phillips disaster of 1989, a refinery explosion that resulted in 23 deaths and over 100 injuries. In the community of Channelview, ACC operated a petrochemical plant that was the world's largest producer of the fuel additive methyl tert-butyl ether. On July 5, 1990, employees at the plant were working on restarting a compressor for a wastewater storage tank at the facility. The tank held wastewater that contained hydrocarbons until it could be deposited in a disposal well. Because the hydrocarbons in the tank could vaporize, the tank had an oxygen analyzer that kept track of the oxygen concentration in the tank and had a nitrogen sweep system to keep the gas inert. However, unbeknownst to the employees, the oxygen analyzer had malfunctioned and as a result, the oxygen level in the tank was at a dangerous level. While restarting the compressor, the gas ignited and caused a large explosion. The explosion completely destroyed the tank and some of the surrounding facility infrastructure, affecting an area the size of a city block.
Following the accident, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined ACC about $3.48 million for over 300 violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the largest OSHA fine at the time. Additionally, the company agreed to safety changes at its other three plants in the United States. Damages were estimated to total $100 million; however, ACC spent only $36 million in repairs and upgrades at the Channelview plant including $20 million on safety redundancies.
Background
Previous industrial accidents in the area
The Houston Ship Channel is a roughly long waterway that links the Texas city of Houston to Galveston Bay and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico. The channel makes up part of the port of Houston, which in 1990 was the third-largest port in the United States. The land on either side of the channel is a heavily industrialized area, with approximately 150 industries in operation there in 1990, including numerous oil refineries. A 1990 article in the Los Angeles Times referred to the area as having "the largest complex of petrochemical plants in the nation", and during the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were several large-scale explosions or disasters at these plants. In October 1989, a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, that was operated by the Phillips Petroleum Company exploded in a disaster that killed 23 people and injured over 100, and two more explosions the following year at different refineries injured a further seven people. These incidents prompted an April 1990 report from Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole to President George H. W. Bush that called on the petrochemical industry to develop stronger safety plans to prevent future accidents.Arco Chemical Channelview plant
In the Ship Channel community of Channelview, Texas, located several miles east of downtown Houston, chemical and plastics company ACC operated a large petrochemical plant. The plant had been in operation since 1977 and had been acquired by ARCO in 1980. The plant primarily produced petroleum additives and in 1990 was the largest producer of the fuel additive methyl tert-butyl ether in the world, producing between and daily. This resulted in an annual production of approximately of MTBE, equivalent to approximately 25 percent of the United States's total MTBE production. Additionally, the plant annually produced about of propylene oxide and of styrene monomer. The plant around this time employed about 350 ACC employees, in addition to about 150 contractors from Austin Industrial, Inc., a Houston-based contracting firm, and had a total annual payroll of about $20 million. From taking over the plant in 1980 until 1990, ARCO had been cited twice by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for minor violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.On the northwestern edge of the plant, in a remote utility area, was a storage tank, measuring about tall and in diameter, that temporarily stored wastewater from the plant's propylene oxide and styrene monomer operations. After treatment, this liquid was transferred to an on-site disposal well. The wastewater, which was held in the tank at atmospheric pressure, usually contained some hydrocarbon liquids that would result in hydrocarbon vapor and oxygen building up in the vapor space of the tank. To prevent these vapor levels from reaching dangerous levels, the tank had an oxygen analyzer that provided a continuous readout of the oxygen level in the tank, and excessive oxygen and hydrocarbon vapor could be purged through a nitrogen sweep system. A compressor would move this vapor to a pressurized tank where it would be scrubbed before being vented to the atmosphere. Throughout early 1990, this compressor required additional maintenance, and it had been out of service for 41 percent of the year. In late June 1990, this compressor stopped working, and ARCO removed the piece of equipment and began venting the vapor from the tank to the open atmosphere, which had been the standard method of vapor disposal practiced at the plant before scrubbing was introduced as part of an environmental upgrade to the facility. On July 4, the nitrogen sweeping system was turned off to allow workers to modify some piping and instrumentation, as well as general cleaning of the tank, before restarting the compressor. The system had been turned off only after the oxygen analyzer showed safe levels of oxygen within the tank. The following day, July 5, the compressor was to be restarted. At the time, there were several dozen people working the night shift at the facility, with five working in the immediate area of the tank. However, the number of people in the area was larger than usual due to the cleaning of the tanks.
Explosion
At 11:21 p.m. CDT, an explosion occurred when the compressor for the wastewater tank was being restarted. The explosion resulted in a large flame that rose at least over the Houston Ship Channel, resulting in large plumes of black smoke. The blast was felt by people as far as away, and windows in some nearby homes were reportedly broken from the pressure wave. At the facility, an area of roughly one city block was severely damaged by the explosion. The wastewater storage tank was completely destroyed, with an article in the Los Angeles Times describing it as having been "flattened like a soft drink can crushed in a vise". The explosion within the tank had been so powerful that the lid of the tank had been blown off and landed in a parking lot about away. Additionally, another nearby tank was blown into a pipe rack. Along with the two tanks and the main pipe rack, the explosion also seriously damaged a cogeneration facility and two cooling towers. However, the blast did not affect the MTBE facilities at the plant.Emergency response
In the immediate aftermath, authorities described the incident as relatively minor, with no reports of any injuries. Shortly after the blast, the facility's fire brigade began putting out the fires that had resulted from the explosion. They would be the main firefighting force that handled the fires, although additional help would be provided by the hazardous materials units from the Channel Industries Mutual Aid, Merichem, and the Shell Oil Refinery. Most of the fires had been put out by 4 a.m. the next morning, with smaller fires completely put out by 5 a.m. According to company officials, the explosion did not result in any leakage of hazardous materials, and no area evacuation was issued, although traffic was rerouted away from the facility. After the fires were put out, the plant's main operations were shut down, including the MTBE operations. The plant was expected to be shut down for several months as it underwent repairs. The shutdown affected approximately 15 percent of the total production of styrene in the United States.Members of the Harris County fire marshal's and medical examiner's offices arrived on the scene following the explosion. While initial reports from company authorities had stated that there had been no injuries, there had in fact been several injuries and multiple deaths from the disaster. The fire marshal's office assisted in body recovery, and by 11 a.m. the next morning, 14 bodies had been found, with two people believed to have been in the plant at the time unaccounted for. Through the day, this number would rise to 15 dead and one unaccounted for. By July 6, the final count had 17 people killed and five injured. Of the dead, five were Arco Chemical employees and eleven were Austin Industrial employees. Additionally, a truck driver was found dead in the cabin of his vacuum truck. He was an employee for Waste Processing, Inc., which had been contracted to help with maintenance work. Some of the injured were hospitalized at the nearby San Jacinto Methodist Hospital in Baytown, Texas. Speaking about the size of the tragedy, ACC Americas President Jack Johnson said, "In my 32 years I can't remember a single incident of this magnitude where we had multiple loss of life".