Equilon settles in '98 refinery blast
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MOUNT VERNON - A $45 million settlement was reached yesterday in the lawsuits brought by families of six men killed in a November 1998 explosion at an Anacortes oil refinery.
The settlement, which came about a week before a trial was to begin in Skagit County Superior Court, is believed to be the biggest single cash settlement in a wrongful-death case in state history, lawyers said.
The way for the settlement was paved last week, when Equilon Enterprises, the refinery's Houston-based owner, admitted responsibility for the accident in court papers.
"While nothing can bring back the men we lost, this agreement avoids the pain of a difficult trial and enables the families, our employees and the community to begin to heal," Carmine Falcone, Equilon vice president of refining, said in a written statement yesterday.
Families of the six dead said the admission of responsibility was at least as important as the size of the settlement.
"It was of utter importance that they admit they did it," said Mike Cade, who had worked at the refinery the day before his brother, Ted, died at age 23. "They took blood from me, and corporate blood is money."
Dave and Judi Berlin wept and hugged in the courtroom yesterday after the settlement was announced. They said the refinery appears to have improved its safety procedures since the accident.
"I just wish it had been done earlier," said Judi Berlin, whose son Jim died in the accident Nov. 25, 1998, at age 38. "They could have saved my son."
Also killed in the explosion were Wayne Dowe, Ron Granfors, Warren "Woody" Fry and Dave Murdzia.
David Beninger, the attorney representing the families, said he hoped the settlement and the company's renewed attention to safety improvements would protect those still working at the refinery. "Safety first must be more than just a paper policy," Beninger said.
In recent months, Beninger had introduced evidence that refinery supervisors were following a management philosophy that promoted fear as a motivational tool and encouraged workers' "ongoing risk taking" in order to increase production.
That attitude placed profit above safety and led to the explosion at the refinery's delayed-coking unit, Beninger alleged.
The events leading to the explosion that ripped through the bottom of the coker drum began two days earlier, when a windstorm knocked out power to the refinery, forcing a total plant shutdown.
The shutdown meant that normal sources of steam were not available to purge pipes leading to the unit's two-story steel drums, where oil was heated and pressurized to produce vapors that could be captured and turned into gasoline, propane and other fuels. That process left behind petroleum coke, a charcoal-like residue, which is sold as a fuel to aluminum smelters.
The lack of steam meant workers could not use it to cool down the coker's interior, which regularly reached more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Production at the unit remained at a standstill while workers waited for it to cool.
When they finally received the order to unseal the coker drum, an undetected pocket of hot gases ignited on contact with the outside oxygen, triggering a huge explosion.
A subsequent state Department of Labor and Industries investigation found that safety concerns had gone unheeded and that equipment that might have saved the workers was not purchased because it was not deemed cost-effective.
Equilon agreed to a $4.4 million settlement with the state as a result of that investigation. The company also agreed to ongoing safety audits and to institute a worker-run safety-improvement program.
Under the agreement reached yesterday, Equilon will pay $20 million to the families within two weeks, with the rest to be paid by insurers under terms to be worked out and approved by the courts.
While the agreement ends Equilon's legal troubles from the refinery accident, the company still faces lawsuits from a Bellingham pipeline explosion that killed two boys and a teenager in 1999.
Equilon is the primary owner of Olympic Pipe Line, the company whose gasoline pipeline ruptured, spilling 277,000 gallons of gasoline into Whatcom Creek on June 10, 1999.
Three managers at the Anacortes refinery were sued in the lawsuit settled yesterday. Under the agreement, they will not be held liable.
"We're grateful this case is settled, and we think it's a fair settlement," said John Wolfe, an attorney who represented Judith Moorad, one of the managers.
Wolfe said Moorad had only been at the refinery for about five months when the explosion occurred and that she has pushed for significant safety improvements.
Moorad was promoted this week to a new job overseeing safety procedures throughout the company, Wolfe said.
Mike Cade said yesterday he had been frustrated by more than two years of legal maneuvering by the company, which in court documents had tried to pin some of the blame for the accident on the dead workers.
Cade said the size of the settlement was important to take care of his brother's widow and two children.
Dave Berlin, who had performed contract work at the refinery as a pipefitter and insulator, said the money would allow his son's widow to fulfill a family dream by building a home for their children on Lake Erie near Anacortes.
"The kids can have everything they've always wanted - except a Dad," he said.