Residents roast ExxonMobil officials over response and lack of information after refinery blast.
By Nick Green, Daily Breeze
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Torrance >> ExxonMobil
officials were slammed Friday evening at a packed town hall meeting for the
dearth of information relayed to the community in the wake of Wednesday’s
explosion at its Torrance refinery.
Many of the nearly 200
residents in attendance complained about a lack of communication about the
potential toxicity and health effects of dust and an ash-like substance that
showered parts of the city and wanted to know how to dispose of it. Others said
there was a simple lack of timely notification about how residents should react
to a refinery emergency.
“The communication needs to be vastly improved,” resident Steve
Goldsmith said. “The community needs to know what they’ve been exposed
to.”
Sherry Lear, whose asthmatic son attends a Torrance school where
children were outside when the incident occurred, reiterated that concern.
“Standing here as a parent, this is very scary to me,” she said.
“I’m not happy with the response on this.”
Refinery manager Brian Ablett, who took over the position about
three months ago, pointed the finger of blame at municipal officials.
“The communication is generally not from us, it’s from the
city,” he said, adding that ExxonMobil’s much-vaunted warning siren — that was
not activated Wednesday — also is not operated by the company. “It’s the city’s
response system, it’s not ours.”
That explanation did not go over well.
“I’ve counted on that warning for 53 years,” said resident Jean
Severance, who lives a couple of miles from the refinery. “What happened?
“If we had heard that siren, we would have stayed inside,” she
added.
Ablett said because no immediate threat to the public existed,
the siren was not used. But those in attendance said they weren’t told that
immediately either.
“It seems like the fastest reaction is an excuse to raise the
price of gas,” resident Dave Jamieson said.
The plant is still producing about 90,000 barrels of products a
day — although not gasoline — compared to its usual output of about 150,000
barrels, Ablett said at a press conference before the public meeting.
He declined to speculate on the cause of the explosion; an
investigation is expected to take several months.
Refinery work crews have yet to even start assessing the extent
of the damage to the refinery and, in particular, the more than 100-foot-tall
pollution control system ripped apart during the blast, he said.
Indeed, Ablett either could not or would not answer several
basic questions about the incident, including the amount of dust and debris the
explosion spewed on the community and how people should safely clean it up. He
referred those inquiries to a group of claims representatives he said were ready
to talk individually to those in attendance at the end of the roughly 90-minute
meeting.
The company’s claims that the material was nontoxic was publicly
challenged by Dave Campbell, an official with United Steelworkers Local 675, who
said that depending on the level of exposure the substance involved had been
shown to cause cancer in mice or other health problems.
ExxonMobil officials responded that, in this case, the debris
was not carcinogenic.
Some skeptics weren’t buying the assurances.
“It is toxic,” insisted businessman Brad Commiso, who said his
Earl Street property was coated with the debris. “It’s not just earth that came
down. ... What I’ve heard this evening doesn’t satisfy me at all.’
City officials announced Friday that a briefing at the outset of
Tuesday’s City Council meeting would include information on the city’s response
to the explosion and an updated refinery status report.
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