{"id":1776,"date":"2017-08-18T15:48:16","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T19:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2017-12-29T11:55:51","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T16:55:51","slug":"workers-lives-tampa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2017\/08\/18\/workers-lives-tampa\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Killed in Tampa: Playing With Fire And Workers’ Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"workers'The Tampa Bay Times<\/em> has published a fascinating and tragic investigative piece<\/a> on the June 29, 2017 incident where five workers at Tampa Electric — \u00a0Michael McCort, 60, Christopher Irvin, 40; Frank Lee Jones, 55, Antonio Navarrete, 21, and Amando J. Perez, 56 — lost their lives at the Big Bend Power Station after management forced them to do a procedure that they knew was hazardous. \u00a0You need to read the article, but I will summarize here and identify a few lessons that can be learned.<\/p>\n

The incident happened when a group of contractors, hired by the utility, attempted to clear a blockage in a tank that emptied liquefied coal slag from one of the power station’s boilers. \u00a0The workers attempted to clear the blockage while the boiler was still running, with catastrophic results:<\/p>\n

20 minutes into the job, thousands of gallons of slag gushed from the boiler, shooting out of the tank through the doghouse door and covering the workers. It formed a pool six inches deep and 40 feet wide.<\/p>\n

Neighbors said they heard the boom miles away.<\/p>\n

Navarrete called his mother.\u00a0The call went to voicemail.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, help me,\u201d he begged, steam hissing in the background. \u201cMom, I\u2019m burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCort and Irvin died at the scene.<\/p>\n

Navarrete died July 5.\u00a0Jones July 8.\u00a0Perez July 20.<\/p>\n

Only Marine survived.<\/p>\n

Mom, help me,\u201d he begged, steam hissing in the background. \u201cMom, I\u2019m burning.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What made these deaths even more tragic is that the company knew the hazards of attempting to clear the blockage while the boiler was still running. A similar incident had occurred two decades earlier,in 1997. No one was killed in that incident, but the utility changed its procedures to prohibit clearing blockages while the boiler was operating. \u00a0At some later date, the company began ignoring those procedures. \u00a0 The reporters interviewed a number of other utilities and utility safety experts around the United States that similar boilers and all were shocked that Tampa Electric did not turn off the boiler.<\/p>\n

Randy Barnett, a program manager at industrial training company National Technology Transfer Inc., who worked in coal-fired power plants for decades, called the practice \u201cobviously unsafe\u201d because it exposes workers to a trio of hazards: slag, high temperatures and extreme pressure.<\/p>\n

Said Charlie Breeding, a retired engineer who worked for the boiler manufacturer Clyde Bergemann: \u201cIt does not take a genius to figure out that it is dangerous. Common sense tells you that when you\u2019re dealing with molten ash well above 1,000 degrees in temperature, it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d There is no guarantee the slag building up in the boiler will stay there. Even the smallest change in conditions inside the boiler \u2014 a slightly different composition of coal feeding its fire, for example \u2014 can cause a plug to melt, sending the molten lava rushing into the tank below. \u201cAll of a sudden, you\u2019ve opened up the hole,\u201d said George Galanes, who spent decades working in power plants in Illinois before becoming a consultant for Diamond Technical Services.<\/p>\n

Galanes said the plants he worked at would never do that. \u201cToo much risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So why didn’t they turn the boiler off, as safety experts recommended and their own procedures required? To save money.<\/p>\n

Tampa Electric had a strong incentive not to turn the boiler off, experts say. Shutting down and restarting a boiler can cost utilities up to a quarter-million dollars. Much of the expense is in powering the unit back up. Plant operators must burn more fuel than normal to heat the boiler to the right temperature. The process takes 12 hours for Big Bend\u2019s coal boilers, federal records show. For utilities, \u201cit is a big deal,\u201d said Mort Webster, an associate professor of energy engineering at Pennsylvania State University. \u201cSo they try not to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, if the company can\u2019t meet demand with the boiler off, it must purchase electricity from another utility, usually at a higher price. Tampa Electric needed as much power as possible June 29. Across the Tampa Bay region, air conditioners were cranking in the 95- degree heat. And with the Independence Day holiday approaching, more people were likely to be home.<\/p>\n

OSHA is still investigating this incident, and given the magnitude of the tragedy, will probably take the full 6 months to issue citations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had told them as a group numerous times that that was wrong, that they were playing with fire\u201d — R. Floyd Suggs, union business manager\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lessons (Not) Learned<\/h2>\n

There are a few observations and lessons that can be taken from this tragedy:<\/p>\n