News is sketchy so far, but NewsRadio KCBS is reporting a fire with at least 8 injured at the oil refinery on the edge of the bay in Martinez, Ca....TASCO is the owner. Having been a news junkie for 30 yrs, I have never heard of so many disasters involving refineries/chem plants until this year.....I don't think it is coincidental. These people are rushing against the clock they know is ticking. The engineers at these places must be real busy lately.

John..

-- gotitlongago (vacajohn@jccomp.com), February 23, 1999

Answers

Hard to tell. There have been explosions at the Martinez group of refineries every year for a LOT of years.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), February 23, 1999.

Update: at least 3 dead there.....they are still in the process of rescuing people from the damaged areas....

-- gotitlongago (vacajohn@jccomp.com), February 23, 1999.

Does seem a little more than coincidental... I really think it's only to be expected as the year draws on... Venezuela is shutting down two refineries late this year because they know they cannot fix the embedded systems and they know they will lose the plants if the try and fix on failure...

Explosive Link Here

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000WMv

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 23, 1999.

I live nearby. Latest news on KCBS doesn't sound Y2K related. A crew, on a scaffolding, had a pipe next to them carrying volatile liquid explode into a fireball. Sounds like facility maintenance activity gone way wrong. Tosco has lots of these events.

-- (not@this.time), February 23, 1999.

Y2K-related or not, disasters happen.
There will be more man-made calamities.
It is smart to be prepared for 3-months of self-reliant hibernation at all times.
Boils down to very simple.

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), February 23, 1999.

I have three friends who work at that facility. We moved from that area 5 years ago. All along the river from Crockett to Antioch, CA there are many refineries and power plants. Dow Chemical has a large plant in Pittsburg, and it's not unusual for the sirens at the plant to go off warning nearby residents to close their windows and stay inside due to chemicals being released into the air. The plants has been there for years and years...I wonder how many embedded chips there are in those plants and refineries? Thankful we got out there!

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), February 23, 1999.

On top of Y2K accidents happen.

How quickly will the emergency response teams be able to deploy and "how" will they hear about it?

Do you ever get to feeling like all these accidents are pre-Y2K tests from the standpoint of learning lessons. They are happening all over the country.

Very strange. Or are we just more sensitive now?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 24, 1999.

Diane: With people being killed, I don't think that it's an intentional thing. These chemical plants have mock disaster drills for when the real thing happens. They may or may not be Y2K related. Some of them sound like worker errors, such as welding on tanks that are highly explosive. We had an oil tank blow up in our town. We live several miles away, but it shook the windows in our house. No one was injured, but it scared the poop out of everyone! As long as you have dangerous chemicals your going to have accidents....maybe even more so now with Y2K.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), February 24, 1999.

I guess we're all extra sensitive in listening for any news of what we are afraid of hearing. All of us GIs must have our antennae up and scanning.

Certainly there have been and are going to be industrial explosions and accidents without Y2K in the mix. I'm more concerned with what happens Y2K-day and afterwards. Imagine the "walk in a minefield" feeling workers will have at facilities doing fix-on-failure if there are serious incidents at other plants on 01/01/2000.

We might not see any plants get back on line if the workers see bad things happen and decide to head for the hills while they still have the skin on their backs.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 24, 1999.