Refinery tank was repaired before fire

WOODS CROSS — Tank 105 — the culprit in a spectacular oil refinery fire that critically injured four workers — was repaired weeks before it went up in flames and was leaking vapors well before the incident, an investigator announced Friday.

It is those repairs and the changes made in the refining process that will be much of the focus of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Don Holmstrom, a supervisory investigator with the federal agency, outlined the parameters of the probe into the Jan. 12 conflagration at the Silver Eagle Refinery during a press conference at a Woods Cross hotel.

Ironically, the backdrop was across the street from a group of innocuous refinery tanks going about everyday business.

It was anything but usual earlier this month when vapors from Tank 105 found their way to an ignition source and spawned a fire that took all night to extinguish and burned two employees and two contractors in a building an estimated 238 feet away. All four continue to recover.

The proximity of the "lab" and an open smoking shed will also play into the investigation by the agency, which four years ago made urgent recommendations regarding the location of buildings next to hazardous tanks. That recommendation came after a 2005 refinery explosion and fire in Texas that killed 15 people that Holmstrom also investigated.

The non-regulatory agency can only make recommendations, but its findings are routinely distributed to industry officials, lawmakers and others for action and reform.

Holmstrom said employees were rightfully in an open-air smoking shed and had been smoking cigarettes, but stressed that cigarettes were not the source of ignition.

"It is more than just a refinery, it is a workplace," he said.

Investigators have been at the Woods Cross refinery the last two weeks, and in the months ahead will examine the structural integrity of the tank, changes made during the refining process that affect that tank and what caused the vapors to escape from the vents. Tank 105 had an interior floating roof and another permanent seal that was welded to its top, but workers had complained of smelling vapors, even that night, he said.