Grieving Brother Sues - And Works At - Refinery

ANACORTES - One year after a refinery explosion killed his brother Ted, Mike Cade finds his days still ringed with sorrow.

"In the morning, it's kind of that depression, you don't want to get up. It's a fight to leave the bed; it's a fight to leave the room; it's a fight to leave the house," Cade said.

"At night, I still have the nightmares. It's a lot of waking up with the bed moved a couple feet and me all drenched," he said. "Luckily, I don't remember most of them."

It's not surprising Cade can't forget the explosion that took his brother's life. Cade, who turned 31 yesterday, still works at Equilon's Puget Sound refinery, located on a muddy flat just outside of town.

He was working in the refinery's coker unit the day before his 23-year-old brother came to work there and was killed along with five other men in one of the state's worst industrial accidents.

The events leading to the explosion that ripped through the bottom of the coker drum Nov. 25, 1998, began two days earlier, when a windstorm knocked out power to the refinery, forcing a total plant shutdown.

At the coker unit where the Cades worked, 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 or other fuels. That process left behind a charcoal-like residue called petroleum coke, 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 were given the order to unseal the coker drum, an undetected pocket of hot gases ignited on contact with the outside oxygen, triggering a huge explosion.

Also killed in the explosion were Wayne Dowe, Ron Granfors, Jim Berlin, Warren "Woody" Fry and Dave Murdzia. A private memorial service for the men was scheduled today at the refinery.

The tragedy hit hard in this blue-collar town of 33,000, where most people have a friend or family member who works at one of the two refineries.

There are times when Mike Cade wishes he had died instead of Ted, who left behind two young children and a wife.

Despite his emotional struggle, Cade said, he and other workers take some comfort in the safety improvements at the refinery since the explosion.

"It seems like the changes out there are real," Cade said. "I feel safer out there than I do driving to work."

Most important, a $575,000 remote-control system allows operators to unseal the coker unit's giant steel drums while standing in a shed 200 feet away. Before, operators had to stand right next to the coker drum while unsealing it, exposing them to fire and toxic clouds if an explosion occurred.

Also, a new $30,000 natural-gas system will allow workers to purge pipes leading to the coker drum if a power failure results in the loss of steam.

Besides the new equipment, the workers' union won some new concessions from the refinery owner in the $4.4 million settlement reached between Equilon and the state Department of Labor and Industries in May. Labor and Industries cited the company for failing to follow safety procedures at the coker unit after the power outage created dangerous conditions.

The Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union also was allowed to hire a safety coordinator to review procedures at the refinery.

And Equilon, pressured by the union, hired about 16 contract workers, including Cade, who previously had worked for Western Plant Services, a contractor paid to perform work at the coker.

Despite the changes and upgrades, Cade and relatives of other victims have filed suit against Equilon in Skagit County Superior Court, alleging negligence.

A trial is not set until 2001.

The lawsuits, which also name refinery President Judith Moorad and supervisor Nels Enderberg, claim Equilon officials did not have adequate safety procedures in place to protect workers from the unusual conditions at the refinery following the outage.

"I want accountability, I want justice, I want retribution. I want it to change things," Cade said. "I want for companies to realize that safety and the people are what's important, and it will hit your bottom line, which is what's important to you, if you don't do it."

Meanwhile, the year has brought more troubles for Equilon. The company is also the primary owner of Olympic Pipe Line, operator of a pipeline that spilled 277,000 gallons of gasoline into Whatcom Creek, fueling a blaze that killed three people in June.