State investigators have ruled out inadequate maintenance as the cause of an explosion at a natural gas plant in southwestern Wyoming in April, but are still looking into what did happen. The explosion at the Williams Company gas plant forced evacuation of the nearby town of Opal.
John Ysebaert heads up Wyoming’s Office of Occupational Safety and Health. He says the state sent two investigators to look into the incident, and so did the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Ysebaert says that agency doesn’t normally get involved.
“Unless the situation, the incident, was extraordinary, or there’s a pattern, either across a state, or a region, or the nation, of a certain indication of failures,” Ysebaert says.
Williams has had two other major accidents at their facilities in the past year, including one in Louisiana that killed two workers and injured over a hundred.. The company told Bloomberg News earlier this year that it is also hiring an independent safety consultant to review the string of accidents.