At approximately 1:22 p.m. CT on March 27, 2000, anexplosion andfire responsible for one death and 71 injuries occurred atPhillips Petroleum's Houston Chemical Complex at 1400 Jefferson Road inPasadena, Texas.[1] The fire produced huge plumes of black smoke that spread over the heavily industrializedHouston Ship Channel and neighboring residential areas.[2]
The explosion occurred at the K-Resin facility, which madestyrene-butadiene, a type of synthetic rubber. At the time of the explosion, the tank was out of service for cleaning and had no pressure or temperature gauges that would have provided the workers with an alert to the approaching crisis.[3] Ultimately, this explosion resulted in one fatality, while 32Phillips Petroleum employees and 39 subcontractors were taken to local hospitals for sustaining burns, smoke inhalation, and cuts from debris.[2]
It took search crews five hours to locate the body of a missing employee in the rubble. The dead man was Rodney Gott, a 45-year-old supervisor, who barely survived thePhillips Disaster of 1989. During that incident, Gott was in a building when its roof collapsed, but he remained in the blazing plant to save a woman and attend to the injured."[2]
TheOccupational Safety and Health Administration's six-month investigation concluded that failure to train workers properly was a key factor in the explosion and fire, and it proposed thatPhillips Petroleum be fined $2.5 million in penalties for 50 alleged violations of safety standards at the facility.[4]
The facility continued to manufacturehigh-density polyethylene (HDPE), as well aspolypropylene and K-Resin SBC[5] until 2011. This complex employs 750 workers for the production ofspecialty chemicals, including 150 operations and maintenance personnel.[6]
The facility also experienced fatalities in1989 and1999. Today the facility only manufactures polyethylene.
| Predecessors |  | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brands | |||||
| Subsidiaries |
| ||||
| Facilities |
| ||||
| Industrial disasters | |||||
| Related topics | |||||
29°43′54″N95°10′51″W / 29.7318°N 95.1807°W /29.7318; -95.1807
