WHO'S NEXT? Five years after the deaths of 17 BP employees, BP has yet to improve on safety!

[Omaha Steve]

http://weeklytoll.blogspot.com/2009/09/whos-next-five-years-after-deaths-of-17.html

With all the bad news that surrounds me on a daily basis one could easily question why I cannot seem to build up some sort of immunity to the stories that bother me the most as many feel I should be used to it by now. As if it were even a possibility. I'll never get used to it and anyone who believes they could is either full of shit or completely naive. Once you're affected, you're affected and every death from that point on affects you. And while many would say that making a conscious decision to purposely surround yourself with familiar tragedies after surviving your own, is the self destructive behavior of someone who can't let go of their pain.



Yet the sad fact is avoidance of knowledge and the decision to let it go, and or do nothing, to prevent history from repeating itself would in fact be harder by far to live with. And so I try every day to do my best to make a difference without giving in to the anger that always surfaces when I come across a story like this one.

"BP asks for more time to make plant improvements"

Go read it and then think about how the families of Raymundo C. Gonzalez, Jr. and Leonard Maurice Moore, Jr., who were killed back in 2004, must feel about BP asking for more time. And how about the families of the other 15 BP employees killed in an explosion just 6 months later in 2005. What about them? Doesn't the media believe the family members might have something to say about BP's request for more time - aside from the five years they have already had to correct the issues that cost 17 people their lives? Can this really be a case of the media not giving a shit about doing the job they are meant to do.... at least in such a manner that the public has a shot at understanding the problem for what it is and not what BP wants them to see.

For example, the most someone out of the loop will take away from a story entitled "BP asks for more time to make plant improvements" is 'so what'! BP needs improvements or here's a story I wont bother to read BOO HOO BP. Who could blame the public for a lack of concern for BP and their problems. (not to mention that safety and improvements are two different things)

FULL story at link.

[Craftsman]

1. About 20 years and a hundred pounds ago I worked in this refinery

It was a poster boy for the need of OSHA then. From what I hear nothing has changed.