McWane Stikes Again

PBS/Frontline aired a program called A Dangerous Business Revisited. I blogged a little piece here. Well McWane strikes again! Last night "An explosion at Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Co. (which was one of the facilities with major indictments) injured three people, the Utah County sheriff's office said. The three were taken to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center with injuries that were not life-threatening, Sgt. Spencer Cannon told The Salt Lake Tribune."

One of the Toll's readers sent in their account "tonight (17 February) a plant exploded in or near Springville, Utah. That's at least 8 miles from where I work, but we felt the blast here. I was just sitting at my desk... and then BLAM! my entire world became sound. It scared me so bad. I thought a plane crashed into the roof, or a bomb went off, or something else. I ran outside and starting looking around, but everything seemed fine. But it was SO loud. I found out...it was a plant down there, but not what kind."

WcWane claims on their index page "We believe in protecting the health and safety of our employees and embracing our duty to be good stewards of our environment. This is a path that will take our company to the highest level of corporate responsibility. This is the McWane Way."

The New McWane now employs Pat Tyson (Lawyer), former director of OSHA and past Chairman of the Board of the National Safety Council, My first real knowledge of McWane came from your broadcast; I watched that with my family. And two days later I got a call from the general counsel saying, "Can you help us with this problem? And that's one of the things that we do; I'm a safety and health lawyer, and so we get involved with companies that need help in making their program better."

Hank Habicht, former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
who now states "My conclusions were -- I didn't find malice in the leadership of the company. These weren't people who wanted to pollute or wanted to hurt people, but there was a gap, you could say, in management systems in the company. It was a very decentralized company. Another key point that I found was that the company basically quadrupled in size, I think, since the 1970s through acquisition."

and of course John Hinshaw Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor and head over the inspections of McWane. "I was familiar [with McWane] based on the information that the agency had in regard to their compliance situation....And they had done an awful lot, but they had more to [do]. And I wanted to be a part of that. I'm not going to risk my reputation or get involved in any organization unless we show significant progress. And they convinced me that's what they intended to do."

Bla babla babla bla bla...Well I suppose money does speak louder than words and what better way to skate around than with the experts.

Where the hell is the protection? So let me leave you with this plea!: