Killed at Plant : Dead Man’s Diary Spurs D.A. Probe

“Lucy, in case of emergency-- whatever happens to me . . . “ began the scrawled note found in the trunk of the dead man’s car.

“Please tell Albert to sue the company . . . for damages. Also at the same time alert all government agencies for the closure of Intercoastal--Facet & Rutherford Pacific. . . .”

Days after 58-year-old Jose Barnum Lopez drowned in a tank of dirty motor oil following an explosion at a Long Beach petroleum recycling plant, the handwritten pages of his informal diary were in the hands of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The discovery of the notes, addressed to Lopez’s wife, has prompted an investigation of the company where Lopez worked, Facet Energy Inc., and two related firms, Rutherford Pacific Inc. and Intercoastal Oil Corp. The inquiry is being conducted by the district attorney’s office, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state and county departments of health and other agencies.

If evidence of negligence is discovered, the probe could lead to the filing of involuntary manslaughter or second-degree murder charges in Lopez’s death, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Chatten-Brown, the office’s top authority on occupational safety, said Tuesday.

“Any of these industrial death cases where we feel the facts warrant, we will look at very closely, as we are in this case, to determine what would be the most appropriate filing,” Chatten-Brown said.

Meanwhile, the district attorney’s environmental crime section is looking into possible violations of state hazardous waste storage and disposal laws at the Long Beach waste oil recycling plant, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Barry C. Groveman, who heads the unit.

Lopez’s diary, discovered by the dead man’s nephew and subsequently turned over to authorities, alleges that Facet Energy, 3020 Orange Ave., systematically engaged in the improper receipt, storage and disposal of such highly flammable waste materials as thinner, gasoline and solvents, as well as highly refined petroleum products known as “light-ends,” sometimes mixing the flammable substances with waste motor oil in large storage tanks on the Facet property.

The company denies the charge.

Toxic Material

“We don’t come in contact with those things,” Lawrence C. Webster, president and owner of Facet, told The Times Tuesday. “We don’t bring them in, and we don’t do anything that creates a toxic material in our processing.”

Webster said the discovery of Lopez’s diary came as a surprise. He said that on the advice of his attorney, he could not discuss details of Lopez’s allegations.

“We haven’t done anything wrong. I guess we’re going to have to wait for our day in court. Unfortunately, it’s going to cost us a fortune, I guess, to get there,” Webster said.

Lopez, who had been with the company since 1979, was the most senior of Facet’s six employees, according to Webster. He was killed in the early evening of Feb. 21, in what has officially been ruled an industrial accident.

According to the authorities, a Facet foreman reported that he heard a loud explosion near a large oil waste storage tank about 5:30 p.m. As he watched from a shed about 80 feet from the blast, the foreman said, he saw a cloud of smoke and flames rising from one of two smaller “drop” tanks near the storage tank.

Store Oil

The smaller tanks are used to store oil until it can be piped into the storage tank.

At the time of the explosion, company employees reported that a Rutherford truck was pumping waste oil into the west drop tank. After the explosion, Lopez’s body was found in 33 inches of motor oil in the west tank.

There has been no official determination of what caused the explosion, but the Los Angeles County coroner’s office concluded that Lopez died of asphyxia due to drowning. Lopez’s lungs were full of oil that, according to the coroner’s report, gave off an odor of kerosene.

Chatten-Brown said it would be unusual under normal circumstances to find kerosene mixed with waste motor oil in sufficient quantities to produce such an odor.

Another mystery, Chatten-Brown said, is how Lopez came to be in the drop tank. An opening on the tank top, covered by a broken screen, measured only 26 by 28 inches, she said.

Seen in Area

“Nobody actually saw him while he was standing at the time of the explosion. They had seen him in that area previously, but that is something we are interested in talking to the coroner about,” she said.

The contents of Lopez’s diary are described in an affidavit filed in Los Angeles Municipal Court. The affidavit, sworn by Walter O. Fuller, a special investigator for Cal-OSHA, was used by authorities to obtain a warrant for an April 1 search of the Facet Energy plant.

During the search, authorities seized business records and samples of soil and petroleum products stored at the site. The district attorney’s office has not yet received complete results from tests conducted on the seized materials, Chatten-Brown said.

According to the affidavit, Lopez asserted in his notes that:

- Rutherford-Pacific, a trucking company related through ownership to Facet Energy, hauled highly combustible materials that were labeled as “used oil” or “diesel” to avoid filing a hazardous substance manifest with state authorities.

- Facet Energy and Intercoastal Oil shipped combustible materials as “light diesel.”

- Facet Energy permitted water laced with combustible materials to drain into Long Beach sewers and into a pit that allowed seepage into the soil.

- The company blended waste oil with combustible materials to disguise the presence of gasoline, styrine and other hazardous substances.

- Storage tanks on Facet property permitted water and oil to seep into the ground.

- Some Facet workers were not supplied with proper protective clothing or breathing devices when they were assigned to clean the insides of tank trucks.

The company had previously been cited for operating a waste oil recycling operation without a proper permit, the affidavit said. Groveman, the deputy district attorney, said his office is investigating the status of Facet’s permit.