Mayor Prods Investigators After Latest Mobil Blasts

A day after two explosions at Mobil’s Torrance refinery killed one man and injured 10 others, the mayor called for speeding up a safety investigation that began after an explosion and 2-day fire last November.

The inquiry gained impetus after charges by union employees of lax safety procedures, but Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert said the investigation has bogged down because Mobil Oil Corp. has delayed the city’s access to the refinery.

“We can’t wait endlessly,” Geissert said Saturday. “Let’s face it, refining is a hazardous industry. It is a danger for us, a danger for the people who live there.”

Even as Geissert expressed impatience with Mobil over the progress of a broader safety investigation, a multiagency groupmet Saturday with Mobil officials to begin an investigation into Friday’s accidents. Officials from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the coroner’s office, the Torrance Fire Department and Cal Cat Chem Co., whose employee was killed in the second blast on Friday, attended the meeting.

Injury Record

The two explosions caused the largest number of injuries ever recorded at the the refinery on one day, Mobil spokesman Jim Carbonetti said.

The second blast--which literally blew up one worker, critically burned another and injured two others--may have been caused when the employee who was killed accidentally struck a spark and ignited flammable hydrocarbon vapors while closing a tank lid, said Paul Taylor, president of Cal Cat Chem. Taylor said it was also possible that some chemical reaction caused the explosion.

That explosion sent shock waves that shattered a plate-glass window in a nearby restaurant, sent debris 150 feet in the air and was heard more than 3 miles away. An earlier explosion, at 9:50 a.m., was apparently caused when vapors reached a welding spark, fire officials said.

The fatal explosion occurred at 3:09 p.m. in a portable sludge treatment tank near an area where Cal Cat Chem employees were working.

Winston Alexander Jones, 30, a service supervisor from Harbor City, was killed instantly in the explosion, Torrance Fire Dept. Capt. Ken Hall said. “He never knew what hit him.”

In response to Geissert’s request for an expedited investigation, Carbonetti said: “That’s fine. We’d like to get the safety study under way and completed as soon as possible also. We want to ensure the public and our neighbors that our refinery is safe.”

Mobil reportedly told the consultant firm hired by Torrance, which was to do the safety investigation, that Mobil lacked the personnel to handle the city’s investigators while OSHA inspectors were also visiting the plant, Geissert said.

Safety Incidents

In the last year and a half, the refinery has been increasingly dangerous, according to safety reports compiled by the Torrance Fire Department.

During the nine years ending Dec. 31, 1987, firefighters responded to 127 incidents at the refinery, including explosions, fires, industrial injuries, medical incidents, vapor releases and liquid spills.

More than one-fourth of the incidents in the 9-year period--35--took place in 1987. The incidents included the death on March 15, 1987, of Cornell Lewis, 33, of Houston, Tex., who was asphyxiated after he fell into a nitrogen reactor vessel. In April of this year, a construction worker died in a fall.

The most serious accident occured Dec. 3, 1979, when three people were killed--two Mobil employees who were investigating the source of a vapor leak and a woman who was driving her car on Van Ness Avenue. The woman’s car stalled in a vapor cloud from the refinery, and when she restarted it, the spark ignited the vapors and a storage tank.

Refinery officials, who insist that safety procedures are scrupulously followed, attribute the increase in incidents to the presence last year and this year of a large construction labor force that is installing a $200-million project designed to reduce sulfur oxide emissions.

“This is a tremendous amount of construction going on,” Carbonetti said.

Non-Union Workers

He denied allegations made by members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, who were involved in a walkout earlier this year, that non-union workers employed by contractors on the air pollution project are not as well-trained as Mobil employees and are not as careful about safety procedures.

The contractors “have their own training program,” Carbonetti said. “They are skilled contractors (who) are trained in certain areas of their expertise and that is why we employ them. They are subject to the same OSHA regulations that we are subject to.”

But the allegations persisted after the strike was settled. A Mobil employee, who insisted that he not be identified, called The Times after Friday’s explosions to say he had witnessed contract employees failing to follow proper safety procedures while welding.

Carbonetti said he was unaware of the specific instances the employee described, but he added that Mobil takes safety seriously and urged the employee to report any unsafe practices or conditions.

The twin accidents on Friday, he said, “will cause us to take a good look at (safety) procedures.”

Taylor also said he was unaware of employees taking “any undue risks. Particularly, these individuals at that job site. In this particular case, they were very knowledgeable at what they were doing, very good, safe, diligent employees. Not haphazard in any manner.”

Vacuumed Liquid

Carbonetti said Mobil employees had vacuumed up much of the liquid spilled in a dike area near the sludge tank that firefighters found in flames when they arrived at the refinery.

Carbonetti said the liquid, which was tank-bottom sludge drawn from an 80,000-gallon “sour water” tank, was 80% water, 10% hydrocarbons and 10% solids. Tests showed that it contained a trace--less than 1 part per million--of arsenic and some hydrogen peroxide, but no bromine, as had been reported by the Fire Department, he said.

All of the injured employees were reported to be improving Saturday. David Moustofi, 30, the most seriously injured with burns over 70% of his body, remained in “very critical condition” with burns over 75% of his body.

Times Staff Writers Gerald Faris and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.