3400 psi of HCL dumped into his face.
With more presence of mind that I would have ever credited him with, he slammed the valve shut, and managed to get the door to the gas room open and stumble out into fab before he collapsed.
I missed all the excitement, the place sucked so bad I was out on an interview that day.
The upshot?
Corporate in NY sent a senior safety officer to talk to us.
• Be careful. If you get killed it could cost the company $50,000, and if -God forbid- you get injured it could cost the company $500,000.
• We're not going to teach you first aid because that would take too long. (I very nearly slapped my Red Cross First Aid instructor's card on the table).
• We're locking up the Scott Airpacks.
• Call the ERT and they'll take care of everything. (They were called, and showed up half an hour later)
The message came through loud and clear.
My interview produced a good job offer, which didn't require a second's thought to accept.
And Bruce? I lost touch with the people at that company, but years later I saw him jogging while coming back from my first day's lunch at yet another company, Hughes Newport Beach, my first day there, his last, didn't get to do much catching up, but it was good to see him alive and well!
Such utter disregard for safety was not uncommon when I started in the industry, 40 years ago. It’s less so, now... I hope. But, I think it’s still out there, in some places. It’s rampant in China still.
My issue happened when we were running a VCM plant. We had put a leak control device on a line to seal a leak. It was the kind of device we used often. We put a metal box around a pipe, sealed it up, then pumped it full of a high pressure sealant material. But this, time.... we screwed up the design. It was installed on a U-tube section of pipe... with the U, INSIDE the box. None of us geniuses looked at the design and saw the problem on paper.. (We’re CHEMICAL engineers, not MECHANICAL!)
When we started pressuring the box with the sealant, there was NOT an equal force on both sides. The box started moving OFF the U. Not sure I’m describing it well... a picture would make it obvious. The box moved until it hit a 2” blinded flange. And then, it SHEARED the flange completely off. That left a 2” open pipe, with 100 psi high purity Anhydrous HCL dumping right on top of our control room. The entire 150’ tall HCL/VCM splitter emptied it’s contents.
The control room was pressurized, but... not air tight. We had enough leakage that we couldn’t stay in there. We had a handful of fresh air supplied mask in the control room. Enough so a few operators could stay inside to safely shut the plant down. The rest of us (~ 10 people) put on escape mask and headed out to the parking lot to look for clean air. We already couldn’t see. We felt out way along the familiar hallway, and out into the parking lot.
When we got there, the clear air felt WONDERFUL... but, half of us had inhaled enough to be throwing up. I didn’t. But, I had ZERO sense of smell or taste for almost a week.
In hindsight, it was a really stupid mistake. But, we had a dozen people who signed off on the design. They couldn’t fire us all. This was at Dow Chemical, by the way. They tried hard to do things the right way. This one just slipped by us.