Cheyenne, WY — Three workers were taken to local hospitals in Wyoming and Colorado after they were involved in an oil-related explosion on Monday of this week, August 10, 2015. Police said that the accident also started a flash fire, resulting in three workers sustaining burns on over 30% of their bodies.
At the moment, though, it’s not clear what caused the explosion or what really took place.
The news said that the location of the facility where this happened is about 15 miles NE of the Cheyenne area.
Allegedly, this happened at a facility owned by Kaiser-Francis Oil, which is operated out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The workers were actually employed, however, by Mundt Energy Services, which is based out of Greeley, Colorado.
According to the reports, a worker was welding a tank while two others were nearby pressure-washing another tanker when this happened.
Map of Cheyenne
Commentary:
I did a little research on this Oklahoma based company, Kaiser-Francis Oil, and it looks like OSHA has investigated them twice in the past 3 years. The specific details of the investigations aren’t available, but I’m hoping they don’t have anything to do with this accident that injured the three workers.
Often times, explosions are actually the result of many smaller things going wrong, not just one large thing. The movies portray explosions happening when someone lights a match next to a fuel tank, but a more realistic depiction would be a lack of maintenance resulting in hoses that slowly come unconnected and fill a room with gas that later ignites.
Obviously, I don’t really know what happened here, but there ought to be a very inclusive and thorough investigation done here because I’m guessing there are a lot of moving parts and there’s probably more going on that what the news is telling us.
— Grossman Law Offices
