Four Factory Operators Accidentally Gas Themselves 2014 | Plainly Difficult
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- Four plant workers would lose their lives from exposure to poisonous gas at the La Porte DuPont chemical plant, Texas, USA, on the 15 November, 2014.
The Disaster would cost Dupont a rather a lot of money, and would highlight the risks of not properly training operators of chemical plants....
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Do you like the bingo card? Or have any future video suggestions let me know!!!
Love the disaster bingo card. Please include it in all future videos! Perhaps arrange it so any disaster that scores a 5 or higher gets a bingo?
Haha, Disaster Bingo! Count me in! 😅
I love your sense of humor!
As for suggestions, 2 more catastrophic events from the former GDR may be of interest for you: the 1967 Langenweddingen level crossing disaster with 94 dead, 44 of them children, or the 1977 Dannenwalde soviet army ammunition storege explosion, for which there are only estimated casualty numbers of between 50 and 300 soldiers of the red army!
What is wrong with your narrator?! Verbal Cadence, Lack of Pronunciation, Pausing, Stuttering, Lost Reading Comprehension Mid Sentence! Just awful, should replace Hiddley Gob Jack with a bot, it'd be an improvement.
I liked the bingo card! Maybe upload it as an image file somewhere and link it in the video description for future videos. Then viewers can either have it open on their screen to reference, or even print out and mark it as they go along.
There's a site you can use to generate custom bingo cards. All you gotta do is input a variety of things for the squares. With a link, anyone can generate a fresh bingo card with all the things you make available to the generator. No screenshot necessary, and everybody gets a different card. I've seen someone do it for LGiO videos. Just a lil suggestion for ya, take it or leave it.
If USCSB has taught me anything it's that the only thing more dangerous than an chemical plant in operation is a chemical plant that has temporarily suspended operation.
As a electrician, it's usually the person your working with.
Studies show shut-downs and start-ups are when the most accidents happen. CSB is on the same page.
@@Un_Pour_Tous The person my what?
@@Un_Pour_Tous That goes for plumbers working with gas lines too.
@@markh.6687 Shift changes are notorious for poor status briefings and failed communication and inevitably combining the two increases the odds.
A Du Pont plant having shortcomings?! I'm shocked!
They didn't have money to spare they were too busy paying Jeff Gordon to win NASCAR races
Dupont putting up Micheal Jordan numbers for deadly incidents
at this point dupont itself is starting to feel like a shortcoming
They are testing new types of plastics
Dupont killing people through the ages..
13:00 Then you get people saying things like "Regulation killed my job!" neglecting the fact that in all likelihood that job would have killed them without regulation.
Yeah, you need to be careful of 'old hands' on the wheels at work. Sure they can know some stuff but they're also usually the first in line for 'it ain't killed me yet' when it comes to safety sometimes too.
I regularly teach Scouts, "Safety rules aren't written in stone; They're written in blood."
@@krissteel4074 "Tribal Knowledge" - Unofficial *unexamined* processes based on experience. If a process is useful, *get it documented* - don't just wing it.
The Trump Administration wanted to axe the USCSB.
@@lairdcummings9092 I worked in engineering as operations for 15 years with the last 5 as a process writer, so I've written a few 'books' as such on how to do things- mostly working at heights, enclosed spaces, radiation hazards, high power, DC power systems, laser and optical systems, chemical and gas fire suppression etc- All the way through to driving off road, hurricanes, floods, bushfires, security, terror threats, what to do when someone steals an armoured vehicle and runs over your stuff :)
Thing is, at least in engineering stuff changes over time. Equipment and materials change, their weight, volume and output is sometimes higher. Which means its just not a static environment for people to work in, maybe it will be for 5 years and then things get changed so you've got to make sure that people know a laser isn't 5W anymore, its 15 and will go through your hand or they moved something around in a site layout which means your sensors will need to be calibrated to detect properly.
Plus I'm always of the opinion that you can improve things to reduce risk
Like having kids cleaning underneath operating looms was considered once an acceptable risk, as was tower climbing and iron working without a harness was also completely fine if it meant productivity was kept as high as possible. Productivity and pressure to fix or complete things on time is still one of the most dangerous things in the workplace of 'I don't care what you smell, get in there and crank that thing over in the corner' means not putting on a mask or eye protection. Maybe you get lucky sometimes, but getting lucky isn't a skill. Its nice to have but its still not right.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year, all the best for 2024
You missed a couple Bingo spots. Common to smell the toxic cabbage = Warning Signs ignored: Poorly routed pipework = Legacy Infrastructure and/or Risks Ignored, depending on why they were poorly routed.
Add human error and you have a new Plainly difficult video.
I feel like a few of the broader topics mentioned apply to a few of these, but yes, there were many layers of safety that were awfully disregarded, working in safety supply it's wild how many smaller things got missed. No personal gas monitors, no ambient Atmos detection, no proper protocol regarding unwanted buildups or associated safe workarounds, undocumented tribal knowledge, it's horrifying knowing it's par for the course for DuPont
I was thinking "Normalized Deviance" would be a good addition to the bingo card, but that's kind-of-basically Warning Signs ignored.
You can probably throw in time pressure too, given the fact that the system was down for several days as they tried to fix the issue. There is no way management wasn't breathing down their necks to fix it before the entire place would grind to a halt somehow.
@@AviertjeYea time pressure/deadlines
I work in a Level II biohazard lab, and I still feel safer than people in these places! You have to have trained folks who know *exactly* what they're doing and - more importantly - WHY they're doing it. Also, it helps to state the consequences, in gruesome detail, of what happens when the protocols are not followed to the letter at all times.
I work in HR for a level 2 biohazard lab. Been through the training your talking about. The company I work for is 10000000000% MAJOR ASSHOLE about every single step is followed. Because one simple "oops" = big nasty crisis.
@@bluejedi723 You get it. No cut corners. Cut corners cut lives short.
@@TheGelasiaBlythe”not only will this kill you this will be the most excruciatingly painful experience for the rest of your life.”
I've watched one of my bosses (VP of HR) literally lose his shit over a new employee doing a step out of order. Granted it was only his 4th day of training and first time doing the precheck 100% on his own before putting his biosuit on. I don't blame him. A step down out of order means he can carry a deadly something outside the lab. This is why we have strict training, checks, The guy did pass and he did catch on quickly. Recently we tracked down a case of listera that caused the deaths of 5 people because the stores milkshake machine was not cleaned properly- the store industrial dishwasher was only heating the water up to 110 degrees, not the 140-165 degrees as it should have been.@@TheGelasiaBlythe
@@bluejedi723 It's great it's not a level 4 with CDC research funding in China
My friend is a chemical engineer. I told her of your channel in university and it scared the shit out of her. Her first shift at work at a refinery in Dubai she texted me "balls" 😂
"In Dubai" would be enough to scare me shitless. The rest is entirely redundant.
@@AttilaAsztalosin Dubai they'll put the shit back in!
@@thewhitefalcon8539 in dubai they'll make you put the shit back in yourself
The Plainly Difficult Bingo Card should be standard kit with all CSB, OSHA, and all other pertinent personell.
That would be good! I might add HSE and RAIB
The bit about the company being fined and put under probation reminded me that, in Canada, penalties can be assigned to company officers, because of the Westray Mine Disaster. Have you looked into that disaster? Given that it changed Canadian law to include criminal penalties for health and safety violations, it deserves a good looking into. Before Westray, Canadian companies cared about safety for nebulous reasons like employee retention and workmen's compensation premiums. After Westray, Canadian corporate officers cared about safety to keep their asses out of prison. Basically, the safety violations at the Westray Mine were so egregious that when people realized that nobody was going to jail for them, the occupational health and safety laws were rewritten to add criminal penalties.
I remember going to a party with my ex, and one of her colleagues, a nurse, had a brother who was killed at Westray. He's still down there and she said it was hard to say what was worse - not getting his body back or the lies that the Westray management spun to try to evade responsibility.
Will never happen in USA
@@thewhitefalcon8539 Given what was required to get it into Canadian law, I hope that you are right. US zoning laws are better designed and enforced than those in India, so a Bhopal-like incident is unlikely to have the same consequences as the actual Bhopal incident.
For the disaster BINGO, can I add:
Temporary fix becomes permanent
Bypassed safety system
Constant alarm disabled
Operators don't understand reason behind guideline, ignore it
Temporary fix becomes permanent definitely needs added on there.
The free spot has to be "Runaway unregulated capitalism"
Every factory I have ever worked at has been plagued with bad practices and implied operating procedures that were very different from the official written SOPs.
In pretty much all of those companies you were shown an official training video, but once you actually started on-the-job training they showed you the unofficial "quick" way to do things.
Needless to say workers get pressured to save time by taking short cuts.
That has been my experience, lots of irresponsibility and lack of understanding. Which is why I wonder how nuclear power can ever be trusted.
@@dianecripps204That's a good point, and imo it cannot. That's why something bad happens ever so often, and the bad part is you get shunned for trying to do things properly.
@@dianecripps204Capitalism's race-to-the-bottom is incompatible with the risks of nuclear power. Same with healthcare, education...
@@dianecripps204 Over the entire lifecycle, nuclear power kills and injures _far_ fewer people than generating power via fossil fuels, and is much better for the environment as well. One of the reasons for this is because there's a lot more focus on safety in nuclear power because it's perceived as more dangerous. (Though, again, if you look at the safety records of the nuclear power chain versus the coal power chain, it's clear that the coal power chain is far less safe.)
It's kind of like air travel: a not insignificant number of people fear flying, but don't don't fear driving their own car, despite the fact that the latter is much more likely to injure or kill them.
@@dianecripps204 with nuclear powerplants they are way more diligent and trained than most other places. I recommend looking up power plant tours if you're interested, it's very cool.
Saw this on @USCSB official RUclips channel before, highly recommended if you are interest in industrial accidents and investigation, the production quality is top notch.
Seeing this again explained in more simplified terms by John is nice.
Pretty sure I saw the exact video you're describing... I thought I recognized some similarities. 👍✌️
@@firstnamelastname6216 Other of their video with explosion 3D render are insane, they made it for the report and were graphically accurate of how debris landed.
The USCSB channel is a source of very good safety related videos and the only fault is that not enough people watch and pay attention. The poster child of this issue is that they have two videos that are almost identical, except that they are about two separate incidents at two separate facilities spaced a few years apart. If management at the second plant had seen the first video and asked themselves if their equipment had the same vulnerability, there would not have been the second video, but that is hardly the CSB's fault. Both sites ran the same process through similar equipment and experienced the same hardware failure resulting in very similar explosions and fires.
@@richardbell7678 I used to work in a small workshop as designer and production lead, the most serious chemical I had came across at work was two part poly-urethane, we used so much of them for coating and the owner was just didn't give a thought on PPE enforcement, or handling of chemical, my colleague got sick from fumes so many times, I never because I always wear gas mask, I quit three years ago, I hope the place shut down. rofl So many problems in management. Some business owner only care about cost saving and never give a damn about workers' livelihood.
Yeah, it's an 8 year old video too.
You say working at a teddy bear shop is safe until you hear about The Great Teddy Bear Disaster of 1877
That sounded crazy enough to have been a real thing, I had to check Google and Wikipedia just in case.😅
@@tncorgi92 I do what I can 😉
Sounds like a The History Guy episode.
@@RCAvhstape That it does. If I knew my history better I might have remembered that the Teddy Bear was named after President Teddy Roosevelt who didn't take office until 1901.
It was terrible! People wading through floods of fake fur and stuffing, slipping on button eyes. And it led to the Great Teddy Bear Shortage at Christmas that year. People had to buy creepy dolls instead. Some of those dolls are still lurking in attics and the back corners of antique shops, waiting for new victims.
Another excellent video. As a Millwright (industrial mechanic), I've worked in a broad variety of industrial facilities, from chocolate factories to mines. I really enjoy the acumen with which you analyze these events. Of all the facilities I've worked on, pulp mills seem to present the fullest menue of industrial hazards. In 1987, in Antioch, California, a recovery boiler explosion that killed 3 and broke the windows in houses miles away highlighted the extreme risk these particular, very specialized, and massive mechanisms pose. I think a "Plainly Difficult " examination of this event would benefit from your incisive examination. Please feel free to inquire if I may be of assistance in your research.
You got my vote, as a Finn, from the land of paper mills.
I've heard stories from people who work in pulp mills, having to deal with dry steam and the like. Sounds like a good thing not to screw up!
Understanding how things work/don’t work is paramount to safety.
Decades ago, we had a guest speaker on our safety day that had been burned by a black liquor release.
The disaster bingo card would actually be a useful training tool.
Ah, Dupont...the wayward child of chemical disasters 😢
You mean the lover of chemicals
I mean, it kind of comes with the territory. We complain about these companies yet use their products everyday (or products derived from their chemicals). Worker safety needs to be constantly evaluated, but these things are inevitable to make the world we live in function.
But they are the US govt's oldest military contractor. They started out making gunpowder and mortar bombs.
To be fair, DuPont's business model has always been to place itself on the leading edge in working with extremely hazardous chemicals and industrial processes. Anybody who makes a living riding that bleeding edge is going to discover all the less-obvious hazards of the work and become a poster child for Tombstone Technology. It's the inherent nature of the beast.
Not defending them but world wide chemical companys are infinitely more likely to have accidents
My husband did temporary work for Dupont and the product was Tyvek. This is a breathable roofing membrane. He was talking to one of the staff in the technical department, and they told him that the product Tyvek came about as a result of a laboratory explosion.
What was left behind were hundreds of very thin, very long threads, like fishing line. They found a way to create it minus the explosion and discovered it let water vapour out but stopped water from getting in, i.e. breathable. Hence, a new product was born.
Okay but why did I just have so much fun playing bingo with this? 😅I got a bingo in the final column: the workers ignored the warning signs when they smelled the mercaptan.
Hello, love your videos, if you are looking for an industrial disaster topic, in Belgium in ghislenguin in 2004, workers ruptured a gas duct while using heavy machinery on an industrila construction site, causing 24 dead and 124 wounded, my father worked for cegelec back then, another industrial construction firm, I remember that it affected him, and the story was a shockwave across belgium, i remember it as a constant on the news during primary school
_"Come with me, and you'll be... in a world of OSHA violations..."_
😂 I came here with the intention of expressing a similar sentiment, but in my heart of hearts, I already knew it had been stated 💯
😂😂😂
You need to remember that insecticides are halfway to nerve gas.
Methyl mercaptan, though, seems to be used commonly in chemical plants
Some not all
You should do a video on the DuPont C8 Scandal. People living near that plant are still dealing with the side effects of this.
Dark Waters is a great movie
DuPoint is an evil company
@@BGTech1all companies are evil
Chemical factories and safety violations NEVER end well together.
Well done, as always! One of my favorite channels (along with your music project, love the melancholy yet chill vibes). I’m a huge hazmat nerd, and this stuff is stellar. I appreciate the level of detail, and the bits of humor interspersed through most videos, along with the respect shown for those who have unfortunately died/become injured or ill.
A neat thing to do if you ever find yourself in southeast Texas: take a drive along State Highway 225 in the Deer Park/La Porte area and State Highway 146 in Texas City. You can smell and taste the stink of petrochemical processing when the wind blows the right way. The collective complexes in the Deer Park/La Porte vicinity make up the world’s second largest petrochemical processing site (if I recall correctly). As well as seeing the ominous profile of Whelen omnidirectional and Federal Signal electromechanical sirens mounted every so often to warn you of impending doom.
Thank you!
When I was a child we'd go through South Charleston, WV, often and I always remembered this one place that smelled like laundry soap followed by an awful smell, I used to call it the Rotten Egg Plant and my mom would just laugh. We eventually got so used to it we'd just roll up the car windows before we got near it and roll em back down after. The bad smell was a Union Carbide plant and it's next door neighbor produced truck cleaning detergent by the tanker truck load. Weird combination. Place still smells like a really bad detergent.
The study of disasters of all types is fascinating and saves lives. It’s almost never just one failure, it’s almost always a chain of failures - usually culminating in worker ignorance of the forces they are working with. Which tells us safety features definitely save lives, but without an educated workforce with a safety mindset - even the most ‘safe’ systems will kill people.
I don't know... working retail makes leaping off the side of the parking garage a lot more enticing. I'd personally rank working at Build-a-Bear at much more hazardous than a Dupont plant. Dealing with entitled customers really amplifies "the call of the void."
By shear statistics, retail workers are more likely to be assulted than a chemical worker is to be involved in an industrial accident.
It says a lot when it's actually safer, statistically, to work in a dangerous industry then with the general public.
@@melissaharris3389 This is also why pizza delivery drivers have a more dangerous job than cops
@@melissaharris3389that's just how probability works. If you never interact with strangers at work, you won't have the same risks as retail. But operating a register isn't dangerous
I watched that CSB video and you did a great job breaking it down, John. It still stuns me that this kind of company-wide incompetence still happens. Yet, here we are.
I hope to see you make some more docs on what the CSB comes up with.
One last point: the CSB can do investigations and recommendations, but it's the governments that have to make those into requirements instead of recommendations.
There are no real consequences for company incompetence as we've seen time and time again on this channel
dear Plainly Difficult,
I've been an avid fan for quite a few years at this point (I want to say, 3 years? possibly closer to 4 even)
Yours is the best channel that handles "disaster content," mostly I think because of the lack of sensationalization to achieve a "horror"-like feeling in the final product, but also due to your high level of commitment to research as well as the originality & humor of your writing.
I'm writing this comment to request that you take a look at the 1926 Picatinny Arsenal explosion in New Jersey, USA. It's an event I've been wanting you to make for years at this point, and I must admit, I'm a little worried you might never look at it in detail, so I wanted to ask formally for you to make a video on the subject. It's not the easiest thing to learn about, probably something due to the fact that it was a US military accident, investigated by the US military, and they aren't the greatest entity to trust being able to investigate themselves truthfully - but hopefully you can still find enough for a short video on it and the cause, as well as aftermath and politics, of the disaster.
Regardless of if you humor my selfish request, I'll still be a faithful watcher of your content and eventually, should my financial situation improve beyond "perpetual near-homelessness," I do plan on becoming a Patron of your work one day.
Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to find it rewarding to make these videos for all of us - I know that it's probably far more than just I who find your videos professional in quality as well as respectful to the disasters you cover.
Another interesting PD episode. Thanks John. I grew in the 80s not far from LA Porte, Texas. When driving towards that city you will smell all the noxious chemicals for miles around before you visually see the massive chemical plants out there. I can't imagine being anyone that lives close to the chemical plants. 🤢🤢🤢
I grew up there. We had to do "shelter in place" sometimes while at school. A chemical plant released something potentially harmful so no one was allowed to go outside for x amount of time. It had the same energy as a friend who went to school near a primate research center and they occasionally had announcements saying some of them escaped from the facility and not to go near them if they spot one. Just another day 🤪
I grew up around that area and some of my family are still employed by the chemical companies. Texas City, La Porte, and almost all of Pasadena. I agree you can’t escape the smell and sight of the huge tanks and racks and columns flaring off. Crazy how people live so close to them.
I remember when I first learned of how Texas has HUGE areas dedicated to chemical plants.. I can’t even imagine living in those areas, must be terrifying.
If they're dedicated to chemical plants.... Yeah, you're not supposed to live there. Maybe where land is dedicated to living and upwind.
@@davidpawson7393 there are many towns around the plants, that’s where the workers mainly live. Much of those towns were there first with the plants moving in, expanding after.
@@davidpawson7393 anyway, 20 miles away is still too close. The shit they make at those plants is terrifying.
@@stephanieparker1250 Fun fact, one of the precursor chemicals used in at least one route of producing Viagra is Mustard Gas, a WW1 chemical weapon.
For another thrilling Du Pont adventure, look up the 2010 incident in Belle, West Virginia. A man died after a transfer pipe ruptured and sprayed him in the face with LIQUID PHOSGENE. The worst part? The bosses knew about a more durable pipe material beforehand, but chose not to go for the upgrade because of cost.
"You expect to go home at the end of your shift" *except when your workplace features in a Plainly Difficult video*
I love the disaster bingo card. Please keep using it. Besides DuPont lets not forget Dow.
Those Dupont folks really enjoy playing with dangerous chemicals! Thanks and happy gas free new year to you!
The USCSB channel is amazing, I've been watching them for years now! And this is the crossover I needed in my life
Thanks John for another great year. Loving the Bingo card! Best wishes for 2024 and beyond.
There is one insecticide that I used to get for around the house that is no longer made as it was to easy to poison yourself with it as not only would it soak in through the skin but the fumes were also rather toxic before water was mixed with it in order to spray it. It worked well but I did poison myself with it once. had to explain to my doctor over the phone what happened and what symptomes I had, and had my mother watching me to make sure I was fine till the evening as rushing me to the doctor would not do much and I just had to feel the ill effects of the minor poisoning for a couple days. Since it was such a minor poisoning I luckily was at little risk of death but just shows that even when you are careful you can make a tiny mistake with bad results.
We’ve got a Du Pont plant where I live in NC. They’ve been dumping chemicals for decades, poisoning the water table and who knows how many people.
But think about all the jobs.
@erik_dk842 well, they could just I don't know... not dump the chemicals? Thus funding more jobs via chemical removal
Then again they'd probably fuck that up also
Yeah, it's horrible.
@@PneumaticFrog Tongue in cheek. But remember Erin Brockovich?
Is it the one they built to make C8 after 3M decided it was too toxic to make anymore?
Thanks! One of my favorite channels, your tone, writing and delivery are lovely.
Thank you!!
They should have rejected delivery of the shipment. Just like a construction site rejecting delivery of improperly mixed concrete.
The free space in that Bingo card should just say “is DuPont”😂
I thought stuff didn't stick to Dupont... Jesting aside, such a shame for those workers who misplaced their trust in their employers.
Misplaced their trust in their employer? Why are you blaming the victims and not the chemical plant?
@chronic_payne5669 the workers ie, the victims, placed their trust in their employers ie the chemical plant. What part are you missing?
USCSB has quite a fee videos of their onvestigations into dupont. Shits fucked
@davidtraynor8075 Hm, that IS a good language question though. What, exactly, does it mean to misplace one's trust? This question goes to anyone involved in this thread past and present. Not just the meaning de facto, but also de juro
@@WinterWitch01The victims (the employees) misplaced their trust in their employer (Dupont chemical plant). What did you not get?
Thanks!
Thank you!!
I’m soon graduating from college with an associates in biotechnology, pharmaceutical lab techniques. All I will say is proper personal protection equipment(or PPE) is vital! It’s used in various places for various reasons, pharmaceutical wise it’s to prevent contamination from your body, thus without we could get contaminated batches but it can also used in situations like in this video in pharmaceuticals too, less common I’ll give you that but does occur. PPE is very damn important, this should help highlight that fact.
Soldier in a war zone is probably in the middle of the spectrum, at least in US Army, most dangerous is lumberjack and commercial fisherman.
Great video, thanks for sharing!
In the U.S., pizza delivery person is high on the list of people to be killed
I think one of the electrician that works on the big lines is also really dangerous, because they could fall and/or be electrocuted. And the people who go up on the big antennae fall to their deaths too.
@@amberkat8147 you ain't lying. I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if being an electrical lineman was high on the list.
Working as a tower climber/technician is very dangerous and apparently lax safety regulations have lead to a lot of deaths. There's a really good documentary called Cell Tower Deaths on RUclips i highly recommend, if you're interested.
The Chemical Safety Board is vital. It's hard to believe that a particular president wanted to do away with it. It's just as important as the NTSB.
"can you smell that odor?"
"yeah, so what"
"we are in chemical plant..."
"yeah, so what"
"It could be one of these deadly chemicals......."
"yeah, so what"
"you're right... We should just ignore it"
I'm always happy when you upload a new video! Plainly Difficult is one of my absolute favorite YT-channels! I also like your music and especially the KI-videos which are stunning!
I'd love to see you do a story about the Forst Zinna railway disaster of 1988 in the former GDR where a train hit a tank of the Soviet Army!
Greetings to London from the former GDR!!!
Thanks for the suggestion ill look into it!
@@PlainlyDifficult Thank you for all the high quality entertainment and education! (and your awesome british sense of humor)!
Cheers!
Many years ago I was offered a job at La Porte...... I had a feeling that all was not well with the culture of the site, or its parent company and turned the offer down (despite it being a rather lucrative one). Many years later we have this fatal c**k up - I'm so glad I trusted my gut.
The 1996 Pennzoil refinery explosion, in Rouseville PA, killed far more people.
With the exception of plastics refining, oil refining is the most hazardous environments I have ever worked maintenance projects at.
The 3rd most dangerous for maintenance projects are active steel plants.
I don't think the point of this video is how many people died.
The narrator made a big deal about the ( relatively small ) causality count.
In my own experience, there are many maintenance projects that have a higher death count, but none of it is reported by the media due to 'lack of public interest'. @@5h4d0w5l1f3
Damn. Accidents involving toxic gas are probably the most unnerving. Even if there's a smell to detect (and here the smell wouldn't have stood out), by the time you notice it you're already breathing it in...
Safety was highly valued at DuPont. In fact, it was so valuable to them that they locked it away in the company vault…
I remember when this happened. We in the city next to La Porte, Deer Park. We knew something was up, you could hear plant alarms and the smell was awful across our town . Really sad, friend of mine knew two of the people who died.
“Oh god, not Dupont!”
“Oh GOD NOT TEXAS!”
-a Texan who has seen way too many of these videos on Texas incidents
You forgot to add "Alarms turned off" on that card.
The USCSB has some amazing videos on youtube. They don't post often but they are really high quality!
They don't post often because they were defunded by the Trump... "administration". They're working on a huge backlog after being restored in 2021.
I remember this. My dad lives in Galveston and was the legal guardian for the daughter of a friend who died from cancer. This happened when G was a junior in high school and she used to play basketball against teams from around Houston including the high school in LaPorte (on the east side of the Houston metro area). I’m sure the kids at that school had or knew kids who had relationships with the men who died.
I am so pleased to be part of a community that shares a love of the USCSB.
I wonder how it goes when USCSB staff meet the fans. I don't imagine that chemical engineers are generally accustomed to that. 😁
Thank you. It is a rare consideration of content providers to allot a specific time for your ad placement rather than having the ads randomly appear at the most inconvenient time. It's the little things that matter.
I worked at Monsanto uk making herbicide and our plant made some dangerous shortcuts but some of the synth rubber plants, shiiiiit there were some bad accidents especially in reactor areas, plenty of fires and explosions, one plant used to leak chlorine gas regularly.
Very interesting to watch. As a studied chemist (but never worked really in the industry) i am always baffled about the really poor safety standards overall. Maybe it was the bet to turn to another profession in the end ;-)
I have over a decade in the industry. The experience you have greatly depends on which sector you work in, be it pharma, petrochemical, etc.
One of the DuPonts managed to blow themselves up in a failed attempt to stop a Nitroglycerine reaction at one of their plants back in the 1800's. Times never change.
The CSB produces a bunch of safety videos where they walk through disasters/accidents, how they happened, and how to prevent them so they can be used as training tools. A lot of them are posted here on youtube. Great to watch as their direct from the source.
I must have missed this one! Great to see you cover this one, it's my favorite of the official USCSB videos as well. Very complex processes, very unfortunate result.
The bingo card is a very good representation of mistakes adding up unpredictably possibly eventually to a BINGO. Nice one!
oh man, you know things are about to go down the drain real fast when a bingo card is pulled out.
Plainly Difficult/John when he's hurrying through his script and speaking quickly: "Third floor"
Plainly Difficult/John when he's taking his time and speaking slowly: "Fir 4"
Thank you for yet again another great video! I love these mini-documentaries you do. You handle these issues so delicately and with respect, with the moments of light humour or criticism where needed. Absolutely loved the idea of a bingo card - it really shows just how common these issues are. I'm convinced that when things go wrong, it's due to human error, and this video agreed.
I saw the title and immediately knew which events this referred to. 😬 I've watched the CSB's own videos about them and it's a constant reminder to me that safety rules are there to keep you from being unalived at work, even if you work relatively mundane jobs like I do.
It’s like two of my favourite programmes do a crossover episode. A great vid, thank you.
As a former EMT and current maintenance guy I plan on not coming home every day, just in case I actually don't. Imo everyone should, you never know when a car accident or worse could happen.
Imagine a Dupont plant in FL. 😬
you should make a video about the carlsberg brewery accident in northampton england that was a chemical mishap and very unexpected when i first heard it on the news
If anyone has ever gone to the LaPorte area of TX, upon first impression it may look like something out of Blade Runner. There are countless chemical manufacturing plants there, in part because they are close to the Houston shipping channel and the availability of such feedstocks that come from petroleum. I worked for a company that made vinyl acetate monomer there, and it was just one of dozens that made similar products.
There was a BP plant that went up because of bad valve maintenance. There was another plant owned by the French chemical company Arkema that had massive electrical fires because the area flooded following heavy rain and the water got to the transformers. A major disaster occurs there every few years, and to tell you the truth the authorities just sort of shrug it off.
The disaster bingo for when I do some home cooking is very similar to this one 😂
Love the videos! My favorite part is always at the end. When you give the weather report, fantastic and unique tagline! Keep up the good work.
Haven't watched yet but I'm sure to be intrigued as usual! Have a good day Mr. Plainly Difficult
DuPont has a factory close to my old house in Chattanooga TN & it always smells bad around it. I can't believe they didn't have working ventilation in a place mixing toxic chemicals! Then the head guy gets probation, after 4 emoyees die? So he gets to sleep in his nice bed, eat nice food.. Gross.
I worked at nearby site the day of the event.
Shame on Dupont, With that said the wind direction was from the NE to the SW the 24000lbs would have been a rolling DeathCloud in Laporte snd DearPark, which it was not, though the area stunk no others immediately impacted. It occurred when most of the people in the area were asleep. Any chance the 24Klbs is a value reported to cover all prior leaks to atmosphere rather than account for daily losses not reported over the years ? DP is on the hook for this event, this a chance to claim a single event rather than prior lack of control or total continuous deceptive mismanagement/reporting?
I was trying to work out how many bingo spots were covered by Chernobyl. All of them and then some. You left out 'given an impossible task by senior management'.
Got a chuckle out of the bingo card. Love the idea. And you're almost at 1 million subscribers! Incredible job!
I've been a fan for a few years now, and I've never been this early before! hell yeah. Thank you for everything you do man ^^
I stopped being a pipefitter because of all the work we did at DuPont. Their safety program (like almost all other places) focuses on the wrong things. My last straw was when I had to get rid of a guy for moving an 8 gallon bucket from under a safety shower we were working on. Since you need to have help lifting anything over 35 pounds, the bucket was too heavy for him to move. I was pissed. Especially since the bucket is not designed to be lifted by two people. After weeks of investigations and meetings I had enough. I just started bitching about how stupid this whole thing was. The last thing I asked before throwing my badge in the safety supervisors face was who put the water bottle in the water cooler. That weighs 40 pounds. Did they have help? Did you fire them? Now, in the meantime their guys missed at least 8 different valves on lockouts on a steam system we were working on. I walk every system we work on to make sure my guys were safe. I don’t care that it takes longer. But they would bitch so much whenever I did. Especially when I found stuff missed. Don’t let an adult male construction worker move a bucket, but let that same guy work on a 400psi steam system without the proper locks. Quit that job, quit the local. Safety is an industry now. There is money to be made. It has less to do with keeping guys safe than it does with getting cheaper insurance.
This is the same place that one of the guys in our local died welding on a tank that they had purged and flushed. But never closed an equalizing valve. The tank filled with flammable vapor and blew when he struck up an arc. He was launched in the air and his safety harness flung him straight into the ground. His fire watch was in the hospital for months.
Again, loving the in-video citations! Also, I enjoyed the bingo card. It would be fun to go through your past videos and find which hit the most squares...
Oh my god, the DuPont spidery guy at 1:32 might give me nightmares but also I love him 😂
I love his funny little comments and caricatures!! good job explaining!!
What ive been asking, what does the white black bar mean in some of the clips? like at 3:51
Du Pont: At least we didn't buy out Union Carbide!
I feel like the end of this year is completing circles, I found this channel after binge watching USCSB videos a few years ago one of which was the video about this very disaster.
I found the USCSB’s channel when someone mentioned it in the comments of a PD video months ago.
I would suggest looking into the disasters that have happened at the BP refinery down the road
I love the plainly difficult bingo sheet. Looking it over i had a good laugh because ive seen basically all of them dozens of times on this channel
Safety and core values are interesting words coming from a company that was grown from dangerous and unethical practices.
Local Processes, 'tribal knowledge' *(undocumented* local processes), and expedient 'solutions' are ridiculously dangerous.
ALWAYS ask for external review of any local or 'temporary' process deviations.
Train EVERYONE to the necessary standards - And check that your standards are correct.
(SUBSAFE and QC-qualified - Safety systemology written in the blood of dead sailors.)
I learn a lot from the videos on this channel
Thank you so much 🏆
I routinely refer to USCSB guidance in my work, and it has prevented a couple of small scale accidents. I have pointed out in meetings multiple cases where OSHA guidance was inadequate, but the CSB advice that I insisted on actually stopped things from happening.
DuPont and Union Carbide are just the expected names to hear, when it comes to chemical disasters
large companies talk safety but don't train employees well or want it to cost any money.
Enjoyed this as always. Happy New year John and your family
Well done John, another good video.
Everyone deserves to go home to their family, sadly some don't.
Unfortunately I get reminded on a near daily basis of those who don't get to go home.
Live life and love your family.
I live 12 miles away from this plant - I'm from around there, believe me when I say this accident was a baby.. child's play, a fender bender compared to other accidents that have happened around here. I've had my windows blown out a few times in my lifetime from several Pasadena sites blowing up, two of them from the same plant exactly 10 years apart. Can't count the number of times we've been evacuated over chemical leaks, happens all the time. There's enough fatal accident & incident in and around the Pasadena/La Porte area to keep your channel going for a whole year exclusively to the area 😂