×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire
2

CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire

CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire

2
(OP)
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board issued its final report and video description of a 2Oct2007 underground fire that killed 5 people at the Xcel Cabin Creek hydroelectric facility.

http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=9

While the investigation and video are quite educational; you will also find on the CSB site a letter to Xcel Energy Inc CEO Richard C. Kelly. The letter basically informs Xcel that considerable taxpayer expense and time was wasted because Xcel failed to cooperate with the CSB investigation, requiring intervention of the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Colorado to compell cooperation in the investigation. Xcel also tried to block the publication of the CSB final report. The letter claims that this is the first time their experience that a company has attempted to thwart to this degree a CSB investigation of a safety incident.

I made this post out of total disgust for any corporate executive that thumbs his nose at puplic and employee safety. Hopefully such clowns are rare, but I am afraid they are more common than we like to think. My opinion is that any company that refuses to cooperate in a US government authorized safety investigation of multiple fatalities has no right to operate.

best wishes,
Sean Shepherd

RE: CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire

Kudos to you shep !!!

These clowns, unfortunately are not rare.

Killing people and then using the law for cover is in vogue these days.

MBA schools try to teach ethics.......yet none of it seems to stick.

IMHO, the only solution is to turn over the rock and publish the names of all the vermin that purposfully block the truth

   

RE: CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire

Interesting to find this in a Chemical Plant forum as it occurred in a Utility Power Plant, but none the less, the lessons learned are poignant.  In my career, I have worked through the era of virtually no safety rules (hard hats were thought to be just about enough) to safety rules out the wazoo.

Frankly I prefer the latter, as some of the stuff we did innocently enough - we just weren't trained any better - really scares me now that I am trained and aware.

Management trying to thwart the investigation, however, is crimminal in and of itself, regardless of what the facts of the occurance were.

I am glad to see some light of day shed on this.

And, I will probably go hug (euphamistically speaking) our Safety Director on Monday morning.  The life he saves might be mine.  Once when I was on an outage at a Paper Mill and a worker was killed when he came into contact with an energized buss, another worker comment 'these are good jobs, but they aren't worth dying over'.  Too bad Xcel didn't have such a view for those 5 poor unfortunate painters.

rmw

RE: CSB Report on Xcel Cabin Creek Fire

The atmosphere in the penstock before the incident made it equivalent to a chemical plant.  ... actually, much worse than any chemical plant would allow to persist.

The CSB report makes it clear that RPI's employees were basically dead men when Xcel's project manager and plant manager decided to ignore their own company's selection rules and award the contract to a company with a demonstrably dismal safety record.

The common unspoken thread in recent high visibility disasters, and one that I have seen in countless outfits before, is that contract personnel are widely regarded as expendable.  Hence the contractor is left to provide his own oversight, with predictable results.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources