Oil Worker Gets $2-Million Partial Settlement

A young Huntington Beach man who was engulfed in a fireball during an oil refinery explosion four years ago has accepted a guaranteed $2 million in partial compensation for his injuries.

Thomas Clarke, 25, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 75% of his body after the accident at the Champlin Oil Co. refinery near Torrance.

He has undergone 19 operations and lived for six months in a special rubber suit while his burns healed, according to James Hammerton, his attorney.

Surprised Doctors

The settlement, under which two insurers for Champlin will pay an immediate $1.5 million, was with the refinery. Six other firms that played a role in designing and building the refinery have not settled and remain defendants. Champlin agreed to guarantee that Clarke’s total recovery from all defendants would not be less than $2 million.

The agreement with Employers Casualty Co. and Century Insurance Co. was approved by Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Eleanor M. Palk on Wednesday, despite the objections of the remaining defendants, who said the settlement let Champlin buy out of the case too cheaply. The Champlin case had been scheduled to go to trial next week.

Clarke surprised doctors, who didn’t think he would survive the burns, Hammerton said. The victim not only survived but retrained as a bookkeeper, married and became a father.

Clarke was employed by Plant Operations Inc., a firm that supplied workers to Champlin.

A device called a naphtha hydrotreater--a 60-foot-high petroleum processing container heated by huge burners that were fed by 3-inch fuel lines--malfunctioned. The incident apparently was triggered by a brief power failure at the plant, according to the court file in the case.

According to the lawsuit, the operator at the refinery’s master computer ignored alarm lights indicating that the unit was at more than double its operating temperature of 600 degrees. So instead of shutting the heater down by flipping a switch on the control board, the operator sent Clarke to shut the heater off by hand.

“Rather than try to shut it off with the computer, they ordered him to go off and ‘cut a burner,’ meaning to manually go out there underneath these huge burners while they’re firing and turn a valve by hand,” Hammerton said.

‘It Explodes’

“Just as he puts his hand on the valve, it explodes,” Hammerton said.

Clarke was covered with burning liquid. A fellow worker put the fire out but not before the young man was “horribly burned” on the torso and back, Hammerton said.

Other defendants in the lawsuit, who alleged that Champlin was responsible for all of Clarke’s injuries, are Universal Oil Products Inc., which designed the control systems on the burner that failed; Fluor Corp., which approved refinery plans and provided the construction; Automatic Switch Inc., which manufactured the valve that exploded; Honeywell Inc., which designed the computer system that controlled the plant, and Radco Inc. and Babcock and Wilson Tubular Products Division, which built the heater and its components.

Several of those defendants, including Fluor, have said a safety valve on the heater had been bypassed by rewiring it, which allowed the heating unit to be restarted more rapidly after a shutdown, according to allegations in the court file.

Also, the control room operator ignored repeated alarms on the computer board showing the unit was overheating dangerously, the lawsuit alleged.

Radco Inc. attorney Thomas Wianecki said an appeal of the settlement is likely. Other defendants said they fear that additional damages might be assessed against them.

Clarke has coped well, thanks in large measure to his fiancee at the time of the accident, Hammerton said. She “stayed with him through all this.”

Because of his burns, Clarke must avoid sunlight for the rest of his life. Physicians said he runs a heightened risk of developing cancer.