Fossil Fuels are Fatal

By Bryan Blythe

On March 23rd, 2005, operators at the BP oil refinery in Texas City were starting up a 12 feet diameter, 170-foot-tall distillation column. It overflowed, and 52,000 gallons of boiling raffinate, a gasoline-like intermediate product, sprayed onto the ground. The raffinate formed a vapor cloud wider than a football field, above a contractor's work trailer, and exploded with the force of a hundred tons of TNT. The 15 people in the trailer, who had, ironically, just finished a lunch celebrating their safety achievements, were killed. 11 were my coworkers. 180 workers were injured.

On April 20th, 2010, BP's slovenly and parsimonious approach to maintenance resulted in the failure of the blowout preventers on the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig. Oil and gas gushed from the rig. The gas exploded, killing eleven workers on the rig and injuring seventeen. Three million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico.

The damage to the environment from the oil spill and the role of fossil fuels in heating the planet has been well documented. However, the tragedy to the workers and their families only made a couple of news cycles at the national level.

After reading this story, I hope you will understand the dangers that fossil fuel workers face and value their contribution to society.

This novel is a work of fiction. However, I interned at Associated Octel in the summer of 1964. The conditions in the factory and the mercury leaks, chlorine and bromine leaks, explosions in the autoclaves, and molten sodium running unprotected in a groove jack hammered in the floor, were as I have described. I worked for the Power Gas Corporation. Power Gas designed the factories at Provan Mill. The deaths there occurred as described, although the names of those involved are fictitious.

I designed a hydrogen factory at Flixborough, UK. Its furnace ignited cyclohexane escaping from an adjacent factory. The vapor cloud exploded over the site on June 1, 1974, flattening it, killing everyone there, injuring 50 in a nearby village, and damaging 2,000 homes.

In the mid 1970s the engineering office that I worked for designed the Sevin Insecticide factory that runs to this day in Charleston West Virginia, storing and using Methyl Isocyanate. The design of this factory was copied by an Indian engineering company and a similar unit was built at Bhopal, India in 1979. De-engineering by the Indian engineering company to save money, lack of adequate maintenance, and maloperation by Union Carbide India led to a methyl isocyanate leak in 1984. 25,000 have died due to their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders.

Twelve of the thirteen fatal industrial incidents in the story occurred. Four have been moved in time, and two have been moved in time and location to fit the narrative.

Alan Brock meets and marries the girl of his dreams and loves and cares for her and their children. However, he works for fossil fuel and chemical companies where workplace danger is a fact of life. He witnesses injury and death five times, and narrowly escapes death himself three times, before dying a gruesome death at work.

Eric Brock, his son, works as a college intern at the same fossil fuel company as his father. He sees his father's horrific death. Suffering from PTSD, he drops out of college and, also, finds work in the fossil fuel industry. His PTSD and resentment are reinforced by seeing two deaths at work. His newly wedded wife dies, with their unborn child, in a refinery accident that claims fourteen other lives and injures 180.

The hideous steel industry death of a close friend is the last straw. Using fossil fuel and chemical factories as weapons, Eric exacts a terrible revenge on the industry, its customers and the politicians that enable them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CCBQ93G7
• ISBN13: 9798852289384
• Release Date: July 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"