OSHA Investigates Deadly Chevron Refinery Explosion

PASCAGOULA, Miss (WPMI) A Semmes woman was killed in a fatal explosion at the Chevron Pascagoula Refinery Friday.
It happened around 2 a.m. Officials said 49-year-old Tonya Graddy was killed in the blast.
Local 15’s Christian Jennings talked to the victim’s husband on the phone and he said his family is grieving and they don’t wish to comment on the incident. They are simply requesting privacy.
The state flag in front of the Chevron Pascagoula Refinery flew at half-staff Friday as the company remembered the life of one of its own.
This event weighs heavily on all the folks in the refinery including me and so it’s going to be a lot of hard work digging into what happened and finding the root cause and obviously preventing any recurrence, said General Manager Tom Kovar.
Officials said the explosion occurred inside what they called the Cracking II area.
There was a denotation inside a furnace and a fire that also occurred inside the furnace then outside adjacent to it. The most important thing was to secure the unit and isolate the fire and keep it from spreading because adjacent to the unit there are other operating facilities that we wanted to make sure were not affected, said Kovar.
No one else was injured. But the incident comes on the eve of 50th anniversary events that were scheduled at the refinery this weekend. Those events have all been cancelled.
The company reports that this is it’s 5th fatality at the site in the past 50 years. The last one happened 10 years ago. And it’s certainly been a rough 24 hours for Chevron. Just Thursday a Chevron pipeline exploded near a Texas town south of Dallas, prompting evacuations.
OSHA is leading the investigation. The administration’s director in Jackson County, Mississippi, Clyde Payne, said for the most part the Pascagoula refinery has a clean record. According to OSHA documents, the last time it was cited was in 2009 when OSHA found 10 safety violations and fined the company. OSHA must complete this most recent investigation within six months.