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Reading the article, it stated the contractor was a member of the “Hispanic Contractor’s Assn.”. Further, three patients were listed as “no patients” and three refused treatment (which tells you the crew makeup). Sometimes diversity hires come back big time to bite you in the posterior. Karma!

Several decades ago, there was a yearly maintenance shutdown going on at a large petrochemical facility. Several hundred contractor maintenance workers were crawling around the facility. The bulk of the contractors were so diverse that they did not speak English. At the morning safety meetings they’d attend just fine and nod that they understood the hazards of the day and specifically things to do and not do. For whatever reason one crew cut a padlock off of a lockout so they could turn a valve. The resulting explosion killed 40 workers. I have zero tolerance for having workers that cannot fully understand instructions and written in stone safety procedures.

I was at this facility a few years after this incident and got the story from the inside operators, a few of whom had been on duty that day. How the subject came up is that one of the operators was observing a cctv using a remote operated camera on a tower nearby and saw a paint crew working in a pipe rack way up above ground level and not wearing safety harnesses. The operators made some comments about the idiots then the senior operator got on the radio and called the crew manager into the control room. He told the manager that he had 15 minutes to have every one of the painters out the gate and security would confiscate their access passes. Also, he told the manager if there were anymore safety infractions, his company would be fired and tossed out on the spot. No more problems.