Killed in the blast were four maintenance workers, each with 29 to 30 years seniority in the plant, and four new hires, all under 30 years of age. Two of the deceased workers had been hired only two weeks earlier.
Another young worker with only two weeks in the plant was injured and released from the hospital, while a maintenance supervisor was more seriously injured with severe damage to his right eye, hearing loss, and cuts and bruises all over his body.
The blast was so powerful that it blew body parts over 100 yards outside the building, shredded corrugated steel and punched a 40- by 50-foot hole in the factory roof.
Wyman-Gordon is a forging and machining plant just outside of Houston that manufactures metal parts for aircraft jet engines and other industrial uses. It employees over 500 production workers who are members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 15.
The explosion occurred as a ten-person crew was performing maintenance on 90-foot-high tanks that contain compressed nitrogen gas at extremely high pressure. The gas powers a 35-ton press that forges heavy-wall, seamless metal pipe used in power and chemical plants. There had been evidence of a leak in the pressurized tanks and this was why maintenance was being done.
The crew was removing the 2-inch-thick bolts on the lid - a 3-foot-wide, 8-inch-thick steel disk - when the 5,000 pounds per square inch of pressure blew off the lid and tore the crew apart. The two survivors were off to the side. The eight workers killed were directly over the tank.
Debate over cause of the blast
A public debate has broken out in the media and among
factory workers and plant management about the cause of the
blast.
Within a day of the explosion, Wyman-Gordon management began publicly touting its supposed good safety performance.
A newscaster for Channel 11 evening news reported the night after the explosion, "Attorneys for Wyman-Gordon say the plant has an unblemished safety record."
The local media has worked hand-in-glove with the company to make the case that the blast was caused by worker error. Without any proof, a Channel 2 TV news report two days after the blast maintained, "the cause appears to be human error."
The December 25 Houston Chronicle quoted a second-shift worker, who asked to be anonymous, saying that key gauges had been overlooked. "We just assumed (the pressure) was all let out," the worker reportedly said. "We just overlooked it." In the same article, Les Schroeder, a top IAM official, confirmed that the worker was part of the evening crew and then stated, "They've been doing it for years and years. They knew what they were doing. I wouldn't know why they wouldn't bleed one valve off."
Even as the company was using every avenue to campaign in its interest and blame the workers for their own deaths, its own supervisor, Santiago Galindo, injured in the blast, pointed toward mechanical failure in the December 26 Chronicle. "The gauges were reading zero," he said, "which indicated that the tanks were safe to open. That's the first thing we checked."
The next day the same paper ran another article where the anonymous worker retracted his story and agreed with Galindo, explaining, "I was upset. I didn't mean to say it that way.... I may have been distraught."
Facts on company safety record
A week after the explosion, a five-person Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) team still had not
determined whether a mechanical failure or human error
caused the blast.
Reporters have began asking whether the company had a "lock-out, tag-out" procedure in place, which is a minimal requirement for any work on pressurized equipment. Wyman- Gordon officials would neither confirm nor deny the existence of these safety procedures pending investigation.
Wyman-Gordon was assessed a $1 million fine by OSHA in 1993 for a total of 149 violations at its plant at North Grafton, Massachusetts. Since 1972, OSHA investigated five fatal accidents at Wyman-Gordon plants with the last reported death in 1993, at a plant in Northfield, New Hampshire.
In discussions, union members who knew and worked with those killed could not believe they would do anything to put themselves or their fellow workers in danger. "There was over 100 years of experience between them," said one machinist who asked not to be named.
Others thought human error may have caused the explosion.
The plant has been on a very heavy production schedule with increased contracts. While overtime is voluntary, many workers, particularly new employees on probation, have been working seven days a week, 12 hours a day. The maintenance department is understaffed. With increased production and aging equipment in the plant, workers who repair and service the equipment were told they were needed to work through the holidays.
Production workers were scheduled to return to work on January 2, starting with a company briefing.
This will be particularly difficult for the nearly 60 workers who will start work third shift at 10 p.m., January 1. The explosion occurred in the same building as the machine shop, inspection, and sonic departments. Many of these workers ran into the area to help and saw body parts of their co-workers everywhere. The father of one of the newly hired workers, who was killed, was on the shift.
Lea Sherman works the third shift at Wyman-Gordon and is a member of IAM Local 15.