from the ever-decreasing-state-of-workplace-safety dept.
The World Socialist Web Site reports
On Thursday [July 29], two workers at an electrical plant near Tampa, Florida were killed horrifically when a tank spilled molten slag onto them. Four others were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. The plant is operated by Tampa Electric Company (TECO), the Tampa Bay area's largest electrical utility service. The company was purchased exactly one year ago to the day by Canadian energy company Emera Inc.
Christopher Irvin, 40, and Michael McCory, 60, were both killed, while Gary Marine Jr., 32, Antonio Navarrete, 21, Frank Lee Jones, 55, and Armando J. Perez, 56, all sustained life-threatening injuries. Only one of the men was a TECO employee while the other five were employees of Gaffin Industrial Services who were contracted to work at the plant.
[...] A TECO spokesperson reported that at the time of the incident workers were performing routine maintenance on a slag tank--a container which houses coal waste after it has been burned. Slag is a glass-like substance that forms when hot coal mixes with water; the slag tank catches leftover by-product that drips down from a coal-fired furnace into water.
The crystallized slag is still molten hot when it forms, and it was slag spillover that killed and injured the workers in question. An expert compared the gushing slag to "what comes out of a volcano".
Workers were reportedly trying to unplug a hole in the slag tank when the material spilled out. A spokesperson from TECO stated that slag filled a large part of the floor in the plant, "6 inches deep and 40 feet in diameter".
[...] An OSHA spokesperson stated in response to the incident, "It's the employer's responsibility to provide a safe and healthful workplace." Apparently, OSHA was already investigating a chemical exposure that happened at the same plant on May 24. This incident involved the release of anhydrous ammonia that caused four employees to be hospitalized.
TECO has a long history of similar incidents.
[...] [A statement from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 108] notes that the incident was entirely avoidable. "It's time to listen to the employees", it reads. "It's time to stop using contractors to do 'routine maintenance' when the safety of this maintenance has been questioned by employees. It's time to stop putting profit before safety. It's time to truly put safety first."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
I'm willing to bet real money that this is caused by some 'cost saving' measure...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:42PM
tfs spells out that 'cost saving' measure you refer to. Hiring subcontractors to perform routine maintenance is the measure you are trying to find. That kind of crap has a tendency to snowball. You hire it out to a contractor, he hires a subcontractor, who may then hire a subcontractor of his own. No one has any real control over the subordinate contractor's education and training practices. The people coming in the gate to perform the actual job have probably been told to wear their hardhats and safety glasses, but they don't know squat about the actual work environment.
(Score: 3, Funny) by butthurt on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:22PM (1 child)
> TECO has a long history of similar incidents.
-- http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html [pbm.com]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday July 04 2017, @11:06PM
Thanks for that; I'd never heard of nor used the TECO editor... lol... just wow... from wikipedia.
Highlights for me:
"TECO does not really have syntax; each character in a program is an imperative command, dispatched to its corresponding routine. That routine may read further characters from the program stream (giving the effect of string arguments), change the position of the "program counter" (giving the effect of control structures), or push values onto a value stack (giving the effect of nested parentheses). But there is nothing to prevent operations like jumping into the middle of a comment, since there is no syntax and no parsing."
and
"TECO was a direct ancestor of Emacs, which was originally implemented in TECO macros."
The full essay you linked (and excerpted from) was also pretty awesome.
(Score: 1) by nnet on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:38PM (6 children)
Its not July 29 yet.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:40PM (5 children)
Actually, it was June 29th.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:01PM (3 children)
June 2017 July 2017 August 2017
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 1 1 2 3 4 5
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
25 26 27 28 29 30 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 27 28 29 30 31
30 31
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:33PM (2 children)
I'm impressed how good this calendar looks!
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday July 04 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
curl http://wttr.in/
or
curl http://wttr.in/~location
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @07:38PM
"Weather report: Potwin, Kansas"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @09:41PM
Yes. I must have been sundowning. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:21PM (6 children)
Industrial accidents kill people all the time, often horribly and usually due to management policies and mismanagement. My grandfather went four stories down a doorless elevator shaft. My dad witnessed an electrocution shortly before his retirement. When I worked at a copper factory for a few months in the '70s a man fell into a vat of molten copper.
Headline: "Two cars crash in alberta, two killed and two wounded." This is not even statewide news, let alone national news. But we DO need better safety regs and when someone dies from management not following the law, someone should be jailed for manslaughter.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:48PM (2 children)
The worst I've heard of was in my own area of San Diego a few years ago. A guy was up in a tree trimming branches when he fell... straight into the wood chipper. He was working alone but a bystander heard the chipper noise change and when he looked the guy was pretty much distributed all over the back of the truck.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 04 2017, @07:40PM (1 child)
Here in San Diego at a shipyard I was working at there was a navy vessel (don't recall if it was a DDG or a bigger fucker like an LSD or LHD) that had been lifted from the water on dry-dock to have work done on the screws (propellers) and around the keel.
A welder welding a bolt on its screw didn't use the proper precautions with the alloy in a hollow air-filled assembly and caused the bolt to explode into shrapnel. Guy survived but the shrapnel took out his knee for good. Now that was a valuable learning experience -- I learned never to volunteer for grinding while wearing short sleeves and almost had my arm ripped from its socket when a BFG-like drill hammer snagged inside a thick piece of steel. Seeing those big fucking loads swinging from cranes overhead is also kinda unnerving.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Tuesday July 04 2017, @07:55PM
I worked at a nuclear power station. During its entire life there was never a fatal accident. I never had an accident in all the years I was there. They had a "total safety culture" and it worked very well. A few years later I worked at a much smaller company making network storage hardware and I got two electric shocks (I was unharmed). They had a far more old-fashioned attitude to things. They liked to blame the staff for everything that went wrong, including getting electric shocks off of their low-budget hardware. I got out as soon as I could and a while later they went bust.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @10:09PM
A single death is a tragedy; two deaths is a statistic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:17AM (1 child)
Two people dying is certainly uninteresting but as you yourself point out the policies and liabilities related to such incidents are interesting and should be debated and probably changed.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:26PM
All that paperwork for a mere two deaths? Government overreach commie yacht-killer scum!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:34PM (4 children)
Industrial accidents happen. Thankfully they happen a lot less often these days in the 1st World, but that is mostly because we learned from the past. Lots of good people died horrible deaths as we painfully learned how to safely tame the science that makes our lifestyles possible. But it still isn't safe. That is part of why some jobs pay so much, it takes a hefty risk premium to get people to be willing to risk life and limb to keep our lights on. And when things go wrong the lawyers feast while the engineers study the accident report and try to prevent it from happening again.
This article is pretty transparent though, beyond the obviously corrupt source, it is plain this is just union thugs grandstanding on the barely buried corpses of good hard working men to push for more union membership dues to steal.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:54PM
Tactful as ever.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday July 04 2017, @07:38PM
Funny you say that considering that workplace safety wasn't even a thing until unions demanded it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 04 2017, @09:28PM
If it weren't for unions, many of them indeed actual hardcore socialists, the reforms in workplace safety would never have happened in the first place.
When you get to Hell there will be a big pot of molten slag waiting for you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 04 2017, @10:45PM
Huh?
jmorris. Nuf said.
Yeah, those darn thugs, trying to save people from being burned alive the the flaming greed of Power Companies!
jmorris would not know a good hard-working person even if they were dead. The entire concept is foreign to jmorris. In fact, jmorris may be foreign.
You idiot, jmorris! This was at a TECO coal-fired power plant, not a steel foundry! Where is your reading comprehension, jmorris? This may be a case for the SJW "Special" Squad.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:50PM (3 children)
I agree. Safety first.
Heavy industry is dangerous. Shut it down.
High voltage electricity is dangerous. Shut it down. Safety first, remember!
Can't have steam power either - steam is very dangerous. Safety first!
You know what else is dangerous? Cars! And in fact, power tools! All shut down, right now.
In fact, there are entire industries that are dangerous. Commercial fishing, hard rock mining, timber, agriculture - all your primary industries are dangerous. Safety first! Shut them down! And before someone says we'll just make them safe, the reality is that the ocean is just dangerous. From 100 foot rogue waves to typhoons, there's no way to make the ocean safe. Period. Shut down commercial fisheries now!
... or maybe, just maybe, it's safety somewhere in a blend with other concerns, and people can take risks with their eyes open?
Nope! Safety first! You're a worker-killing, baby-orphaning monster if you think different!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @09:25PM (2 children)
Yeah, you're right. Enriching the corporate masters is a more important concern than human lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:42AM (1 child)
Evidently it wooshed so hard you could only read one word in five.
Let's try this again:
If it's ALWAYS SAFETY FIRST, and every other concern comes second or further down the line? You'll never do anything because you could slip and fall on your way to doing anything.
In agriculture it doesn't matter whether you're working with heavy machinery (incredibly dangerous simply because of the power levels involved) or draught animals (incredibly dangerous simply because ... wait, do I really need to explain what a ton of stampeding ox can do?); you're faced with mortal danger just trying to get a crop in. Farmers and farmhands don't want to get killed, but the fact is that even with due care and attention, horrible things happen to strong, alert, aware people. SAFETY FIRST means you don't do those things - which rapidly reduces your society to hunter-gatherers (which is also dangerous).
If you can't compromise SAFETY FIRST in the light of reasonable needs to do reasonable things in the interests of advancing your own situation, society at large or just your own damn family, find a padded room in which to starve to death (because eating is dangerous - you could choke!) and live true to your SAFETY FIRST principle.
The rest of us will take some risks, but try to keep them under control.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:30PM
Since it followed a jmorris post, you could excuse GP, as well as myself, for having to call Poe's Law on OP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @08:16PM (3 children)
You're standing there, and suddenly a pool of molten lava surrounds your feet. Despite the agony, you know that you have to run away. But you can't, because your legs have stopped functioning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @08:46PM (2 children)
You paint a gruesome picture, but my guess (only a guess) is that you are overcome/rendered-unconscious by fumes before you have time to notice that you are trapped in solidifying slag. So you probably don't have time to consider the stupidity of contracting to do a dangerous job that comes without safety training.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @08:58AM (1 child)
Nah... it doesn't work like that. Your lungs are being burned by the gases because they are hot. Chemical burns take time, this is instant. Your legs would literally melt in something as hot as lava. You would not really be trapped in it, but you would be set on fire. And you would lose your balance and face-plant into it. Most likely few second of panic.
The bottom line is, don't mess with large loads of anything. And even a single drop of things like molten steel (this was "only" slag), is enough to burn right through your body like hot knife through butter.
People have problems understanding heat like this... it doesn't even burn. You won't even feel it unless radiant heat causes you to be set on fire.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 06 2017, @12:22AM
Can we assume they died quickly then? Christ, if I weren't already used to nightmares where worse happens this would give me insomnia...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by snufu on Wednesday July 05 2017, @01:14AM (3 children)
this is the fault of oppressive safety and environmental regulations. If we had fewer job-killing regulations, fewer workers would be killed on the job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:33AM
To be entirely fair, there are a lot of regulations out there that are outdated, inappropriately applied, or irrationally written.
Or just incompetently executed.
One particular case to my certain knowledge:
Apply for *business activity permission*
Time passes while bureaucrats work at the speed of government to read and pass judgement on a standard, two-page form.
Request: DENIED.
Why? Because in the time after requesting the permission in the first place, and the bureaucracy actually responding, a regulation (published, but not actually entered into their instructional literature, because ... reasons ...) changed, rendering the originally perfect request newly flawed.
If it had taken a week, it would have passed muster.
This is what people talk about, in terms of job-killing regulations. When everything turns into a high-stakes game of Mother May I, and actual business predictability becomes a pipe dream.
But I'm sorry. You were talking about gilded age robber barons waxing their moustaches. Carry on.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Wednesday July 05 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
I seriously had to take a second look at the poster's name to make sure this wasn't by realDonaldTrump. Was shocked that it wasn't.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday July 05 2017, @06:15PM
Thank you for your support. I agree, it's a brilliant tweet. The regulations are too complicated. Unbelievably complex. You have to be Einstein to figure them out. And if you don't figure them out, you die in molten slag. I've signed an executive order. My government agencies, whenever they want to make a regulation, have to identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed. That's what it says. Whenever there's a new rule, we get rid of two old rules. One in, two out. Very smart! So you don't have to be smart to understand the rules. Because when rules are written for smart people, only smart people will follow them. And no regulations exceeding the agency's total incremental cost allowance will be permitted in that fiscal year, unless required by law or approved in writing by the director. My executive order says that. Terrific! It's going to be terrific for uneducated people. I love uneducated people. And this is a terrific story. I love the slag tank, the tank of molten slag. Gave me a great idea, I think I can get an Emmy out of it. #TrumpTV [twitter.com] 🇺🇸