Month: December 2016

Accident Description
An explosion and fire led to the fatal injury of seven employees when a nearly forty-year-old heat exchanger catastrophically failed during a maintenance operation to switch a process stream between two parallel banks of exchangers at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington

Investigation Status
The CSB’s final report was approved 3-0 at a public meeting on May 1, 2014.

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Accident Description
On the evening of January 12, 2009, 2 refinery operators and 2 contractors suffered serious burns resulting from a flash fire at the Silver Eagle Refinery in Woods Cross, Utah. The accident occurred when a large flammable vapor cloud was released from an atmospheric storage tank, known as tank 105, which contained an estimated 440,000 gallons of light naphtha. The vapor cloud found an ignition source and the ensuing flash fire spread up to 230 feet west of the tank farm. On November 4, 2009, a second accident occurred at the Silver Eagle Refinery in Woods Cross, Utah, when a powerful blast wave –  caused by the failure of a 10 inch pipe – damaged nearby homes.