Disaster Assignment

Public perception towards industrial disasters (Phillips Company Houston Chemical
Complex, Pasadena, TX)
A disaster is described as a sudden accident or a natural disaster that causes great loss of life or
harm. On October 23, 1989, the Phillips tragedy was a catastrophic sequence of explosions and
fires that originated at the Houston Chemical Complex (HCC) plant of the Phillips Petroleum
Corporation near the Houston Ship Channel in Pasadena, Texas, United States. On the Richter
scale, the original explosion measured about 3.5, and the conflagration took 10 hours to get
under control. The blasts killed 23 workers and wounded 314, and initially estimated capital
damages were over $715 million. About 6,800,000 tonnes a year of high-density polyethylene
used to manufacture milk bottles and other containers was manufactured by the HCC prior to the
incident. The accident resulted from the release from one of the plant's polyethylene reactors of
highly flammable process gases that occurred during routine maintenance operation.
Instantaneously, over 85,000 pounds of extremely flammable gases were emitted from an open
valve.
It is worth noting that another two incidents involving deaths took place in 1999 and
2000. Accordingly, the six-month report by the Occupational Safety and Health Department
found that failure to adequately prepare staff was a critical factor in the accident and burn, and it
recommended that Phillips Petroleum be fined $2.5 million in fines for 50 suspected violations
of the facility's safety standards. It was noted that contract employees did not necessarily
undergo the level of training that full-time workers did in regards to hazardous chemicals and
emergency protocols in particular.
A term covering hazard recognition, risk management and accident prevention is

protection, a field of critical and overarching significance in industry. The dilemma of risk
perception can be interpreted as one of coordination deficiency and mismanagement. It is
fundamental that the risk must first be understood in order to prevent risk. Then it must decide its
meaning. In this perspective, the specialist can attempt to measure it, but it is extremely
contextual to the public understanding of risk and has little to do with statistics.
To strengthen risk communications and design successful mitigation strategies,
recognising the public's view of risk is critical. Danger has been described as a 'combination of
the possibility and negative effects of an incident. On the other hand, risk perception has been
defined as the perceptions, behaviours, decisions, and feelings of people, as well as the larger
social or cultural values and structures that people follow, against risks and their benefits. A
broad variety of adverse incidents, including technological and natural hazards, have been
studied in many experiments, and several researchers indicate that risk analysis may be used
either to minimise risk or to alter behaviour (Martin et al. 2009).
Remediation and countermeasures were proposed to tackle this incident as well as similar
incidents. The proposal was to have a comprehensive pre-emergency plan with well-coordinated
response management in a major emergency. In addition, proper training is a mandatory to
minimize the possibilities of errors. The adaptation of latest automated technology can also help
in monitoring process and identifying possible danger before occurrence. The SOPs must be
followed and it is the responsivity of the management to enforce the guidelines of the related
health organizations. So the government is the legal authority that ensures that happens strictly
and performs checking frequently. In fields like chemical industry, it is risky to be located at
populated regions or sensitive environment which may expose the public to potential hazards.
In line with this, similar to the natural hazards, the potential of disaster occurrence exist
in industrial companies. That is why the saying “safety first” is applicable and must be
mandated. In my opinion, I believe proper training or all staff and crew is the key factor to
prevent or at least minimize the disasters occurrence. Adapting appropriate and cutting edge
instrumentation can help to predict the hazard potential prior to its occurrence. Adapting
framework to conduct the maintenance can be very useful to identify critical areas, therefore,
skilled workers are assigned for this task. Last but not least, the official authority has great role
to play to ensure all companies comply with standard operation procedures and penalties should
be implemented wherever violated.
Reference
Maresh, M. M. (2006). The aftermath of a deadly explosion: A rhetorical analysis of crisis

communication as employed by British Petroleum and Phillips Petroleum (Doctoral dissertation,
Texas Tech University).
McFarlane, A. C., & Norris, F. H. (2006). Definitions and concepts in disaster research. Methods
for disaster mental health research, 2006, 3-19.
Martin WE, Martin IM, Kent B (2009) The role of risk perceptions in the risk mitigation process:
the case of wildfire in high risk communities. J Environ Manag 91(2):489–498.
doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.09.007
Bethea, R. M. (2003). Explosion and fire at the Phillips company Houston chemical complex,
Pasadena, TX. In Proc. SACHE Faculty Workshop on Designing for Safe and Reliable Process
Operations.

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Public perception towards industrial disasters (Phillips Company Houston Chemical

Complex, Pasadena, TX)

A term covering hazard recognition, risk management and accident prevention is

Maresh, M. M. (2006). The aftermath of a deadly explosion: A rhetorical analysis of crisis

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