Mobil Explosion: Who’s to Blame? : Finding Cause of 1988 Blast May Be Impossible, Investigators Say

Winston Jones was atop a tank at Mobil’s Torrance refinery when it blew up on July 15, 1988. He never knew what hit him.

David Moustofi was a few feet from the tank when Jones was killed.

“All of a sudden . . . I was all on fire,” Moustofi said in an interview last week.

Co-worker Jerry Lekberg, who was a little farther away, recalled that Moustofi was a gruesome sight. “His eyelids (were) burned off. . . . No horror show could be as bad,” Lekberg said last week.

The explosion threw Lekberg 80 or 90 feet.

A few hours later, he told fire investigators: “I was blasted out--I’m the lucky one.”

The explosion that killed Jones also burned Moustofi over 75% of his body and partially deafened Lekberg. It is a small part of the controversy that has enveloped the Mobil refinery since a thunderous explosion and two-day fire in November, 1987.

Three Deaths

Since March of 1987, there have been three deaths and more than a dozen serious injuries in a series of accidents and fires at the refinery, creating widespread concern over safety practices there.

This April, the city of Torrance filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that the refinery is a public nuisance and seeking authority to regulate it. In March, 1990, Torrance residents will vote on an initiative that in effect would ban the use of a highly toxic chemical--hydrofluoric acid--at the refinery.

Legal filings stemming from the accident last July offer rare eyewitness accounts of what happens behind the refinery gates. The numerous documents--including interviews with workers and victims--have been filed in two legal proceedings.

Most recently, on July 15, the city of Torrance filed misdemeanor charges against Mobil, Refinery Manager Wyman Robb, then-Assistant Refinery Manager Tom Gregory and three officials of Cal Cat Chemical Co. of Benicia. The three victims of the 1988 explosion worked for Cal Cat Chemical, a contract firm that Mobil had hired to treat sludge from storage tanks.

The complaint accuses the defendants of violating state safety standards. It also alleges that Robb and Gregory induced others to violate standards. It charges Gregory with obstructing fire and police officials who were investigating the accident. The defendants deny the charges.

A lawsuit filed last September by Moustofi, Lekberg and Jones’ family accuses Mobil of negligence in the accident. A cross-complaint by Mobil, also filed in Torrance Superior Court, alleges that the accident victims knew the risks and misused potentially dangerous chemicals. Mobil also alleges that the victims misled Mobil officials into believing that the equipment used was safe and that they knew how to use it.

The central question in the legal battle is what caused the accident and who is to blame. “No one can deny there was an explosion,” said Torrance Fire Marshal Richard Nanney. “We know it occurred. How it occurred, we may never know.”

City fire investigators identified the cause of the blast as the failure to follow proper safety procedures while handling chemicals which have the potential to react violently. But they also said a spark from ungrounded or unsafe electrical equipment could have triggered the blast. The investigators noted that the extension cord the workers had used was too small.

No Industry Standards

The task at hand was treatment of sludge from the bottom of sour water storage tanks. Sour water is a waste product of refining gasoline that is contaminated with sulfur compounds--typically toxic hydrogen sulfide, which has the characteristic rotten-egg smell. The sludge--at the bottom of storage tanks--consists of sour water, oily hydrocarbons, rust particles and other contaminants. The huge tanks are typically cleaned once every five years.

Because environmental regulations prohibit the disposal of the sludge in liquid form, refineries must separate the water and oily wastes from solid material. The solid material is dried and taken to a landfill. The oil that is recovered is cycled through the refining process. The waste water is treated at the refinery and sent through the municipal sewage system.

Ron Jones, refinery technology expert for the American Petroleum Institute, which drafts safety and design guidelines for the petroleum industry, said in a telephone interview from Washington that there is no industry standard for treating sludge from sour water storage tanks. Typically, he said, refineries use specialized subcontractors for the work.

Torrance City Prosecutor J. D. Lord faulted Mobil’s choice of contractors, saying in an interview that Mobil should have been alerted to the potential for danger because Cal Cat Chemical was the low bidder by far and because the chemicals it was going to use would be dangerous in combination.

In addition, it was the first time that this process was to be used at the refinery, he said.

“If someone says, ‘I will do this (task) with this process for a lot less money and I need these chemicals delivered,’ then Mobil should have known to investigate,” he said. “The information I have so far was that the Cal Cat Chem bid was less than half the bid received by Mobil from any other company.”

But Paul Taylor, president of Cal Cat Chemical, which now is doing business as Erickson Environmental, said he takes “extreme offense” at the prosecutor’s allegation that his firm’s low bid signified it was going to use a dangerous process.

“Absolutely false,” he said, adding that Lord “will have a challenge trying to prove that.”

Four Chemicals Used

Opinions differ about the wisdom of the process used by Cal Cat Chemical.

Cal Cat Chemical used four chemicals: hydrogen peroxide; potassium permanganate; WA-TAR Break 1, the trade-name for a dewatering chemical, and Optimer 7139 Liquid, which is used to make fine sediment clot to form larger clumps. The treatment process involved diluting the chemicals to prescribed concentrations before mixing with sludge.

The fire investigators’ report said Cal Cat Chemical project supervisor Jim Hernandez acknowledged knowing that mixing the WA-TAR and Optimer chemicals with peroxide, permanganate or hydrocarbon compounds could cause an explosion.

“Other people in the industry (were) just sort of amazed . . . that they mixed the items that they did,” said Lord in an interview last week.

Texaco refinery chemist Tommy Thompson said hydrogen peroxide, which can combine with hydrogen sulfide to form less-toxic sulfate compounds or pure sulfur, should not be used with oily hydrocarbons.

Thompson said that is “because of its nature to explode. When I heard they were using peroxide over (at Mobil), I questioned whether it was true.”

Cal Cat’s Taylor acknowledged that this was the first time these chemicals were used to treat sour water sludge at Mobil. But he asserted that using them is standard at many refineries.

“It is done every day,” he said. “However, it must be done properly. . . . If you wanted to make an explosion occur, you could take those chemicals and make a very dangerous situation.”

Chemist Had Left Site

Taylor said his company’s officials, who have been unable to interview Moustofi because of the lawsuit, remain uncertain about the exact cause of the accident. Cal Cat Chemical’s chief chemist, Frank Straw, who was most familiar with the process, had left the job site shortly before the explosion.

Taylor said he did not know whether Straw could have prevented the accident if he had not left.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” said Taylor, adding that Straw might have been able to force the crew--Moustofi, Jones, Lekberg and Jim Hernandez--”to follow the instructions he left with them. We can only assume at this point that they didn’t follow those instructions. We don’t know why they didn’t.”

Moustofi, who has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toledo, declined last week on the advice of his lawyer to talk about the precise sequence of steps that preceded the accident.

However, Lekberg in an interview from Upsala, Minn., said: “There was no negligence on our part. We were doing exactly what we were told.”

In his interview with fire investigators just after the accident, Lekberg--who had worked at Mobil for several weeks--said the longer he worked at the refinery, the more concerned he became about safety problems there.

In fact, earlier on the day Jones was killed, there had been an accident at the refinery’s waste-water treatment plant on the other side of Crenshaw Boulevard. At 9:50 a.m., a welding crew working in a sewer line set off fumes that exploded, injuring seven workers, two of them seriously.

Lekberg recalled the morning in his interview with fire investigators:

“All of a sudden . . . there was a drift of gas going past--smelled like natural gas. I mean, stronger than I’ve ever seen--like you turned a valve open on a propane thing and just let it run. . . .

“Like, wow, this is drifting across 10 acres, this whole place could blow up and . . . about an hour later, the guys blow up on the other end” of the refinery.

The Fire Department investigation found that the morning explosion at the waste-water treatment plant was caused when a welding spark ignited hydrocarbon vapors. The investigation concluded that the odor Lekberg smelled early that day “had nothing whatsoever to do with” the morning explosion, Nanney said.

Despite his concerns, Lekberg continued work after the explosion and fire in the morning.

According to Fire Department reports, the Cal Cat Chemical crew had just started pumping a solution of sludge and dilute permanganate into a tank containing dilute hydrogen peroxide when the tank exploded.

“All I felt was this crisping and a terrible thunkkh,” Lekberg said in the report.

In his interview last week, he said: “People don’t know what an explosion feels like. It is an impact that feels like every bone in your body is broken, like being hit by a big rig on the highway with a couple of mattresses tied in front . . . just that sudden with that much force.”

Lekberg said it seemed like minutes before Mobil employees brought water to pour on Moustofi. “His skin was sizzling,” he said.

“I was in extreme pain and screaming,” Moustofi said last week. “I put my hands on my face and put out the fire.”

Fire Inspector Robert Maag, wearing his yellow Fire Department emergency gear, arrived at the refinery in an official car and began to take pictures.

Interference Claimed

“A person who appeared to have some authority with Mobil and who was wearing a Mobil helmet and Mobil ID tag interfered with my taking of photographs by holding his hand in front of my camera and told me that no photographs were to be taken,” Maag wrote in a Fire Department report.

“Later that evening, while similarly attired, as I was conducting interviews with potential witnesses, different personnel from Mobil contacted individuals that I was trying to speak to, ushered them away from me so as to prevent me from obtaining necessary statements.”

Maag talked to Torrance police and found that Mobil employees had blocked them from the explosion site, the report said. The next day, Fire Inspector Doug Bergen discovered that Mobil employees had not honored the yellow “caution” tape that was supposed to seal off the accident scene.

Last week, Mobil said the Fire Department had never complained about any interference with its investigations.

After the explosion, Moustofi--with second- and third-degree burns over 75% of his body--was close to death for two weeks. He spent four months in Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center and underwent six months of painful physical therapy there.

In a telephone interview from his Long Beach apartment, Moustofi said that he still has only limited movement on his right side, in his shoulders and elbows. His parents, who live in Tehran, Iran, stayed with him for seven months. “I could not do everyday duties like cleaning and cooking,” he said. “It really messed up my life.”

Has Not Returned to Work

He has not returned to work, but when he is able, he said, he will seek a desk job.

“For a few months I had bad dreams, nightmares,” he said. “I do have bad dreams about it. The pain. Many, many nights of extreme pain.”

He still has dreams about being on fire, he said.

Lekberg suffered burns on 5% of his body, lost hearing completely in one ear and suffered partial hearing loss in the other. He constantly hears a ringing noise, he said from a relative’s home in Upsala.

Unable to get the explosion off his mind, Lekberg said he receives psychological counseling. After the accident, he said, he relived the explosion “50 times a day.”

Now he is seeking work again but “as soon as they see you have been in a complicated situation like this . . . companies just excuse their way out,” he said.

On May 19, the Torrance Fire Department learned that Cal Cat Chemical, now operating as Erickson Environmental, was again preparing to treat sludge from sour water tanks at Mobil.

An inquiry showed that the firm lacked a city business license, a permit to store and use hazardous materials as well as disclosure forms for hazardous materials. A Fire Department on-site inspection May 24 revealed that equipment to be used was improperly grounded against electrical sparks.

Permits were later issued and Taylor said the work, which is nearing completion, “has gone extremely smoothly with no real surprises.”

“We did take some additional precautions,” he said. “We did learn some things from the previous work there.”