The explosion and hours of fire at Chevron refinery Thursday night took place in a community deeply told in El Segundo, South Bay.
The explosion sent shockwaves into the refinery site, reportedly shaking residents a mile away. A 100-foot-high pillar of fire casts an orange glow into the night sky. Towering feathers of smoke and irritating smell drifted eastward with onshore wind.
While local regulators investigate the fire, environmental advocacy laments that federal safety agencies are likely not taking part in their efforts to find the cause of Thursday’s explosion. According to public records reviewed by The Times, the incident was one of the most dangerous events in the refinery’s 114-year history and added to the long list of environmental and safety violations.
Most staff at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency tasked with investigating workplace safety, are not functioning due to ongoing federal closures. The US Commission on Chemical Safety and Hazard Mitigation, which determines the root cause from dangerous chemical releases, could also lose funds due to the Trump administration’s proposal to cut budgets.
“The Trump administration has it, and the federal government is now closed,” said Joe Ryo, a nearby Hawthorne resident and president of Clean Air Coalition, a statewide nonprofit. “So, we’ll never know what really caused this, as experts who understand this are no longer there to do it.”
Without a clear answer, unions fear that similar disasters could put thousands of workers at 15 California refineries.
“Companies are making billions of profits, making it nearly impossible to make sure we are safe from terrible disasters,” said Joe Wooline, director and director of the Labor Network. “In California, we’ve seen horrific injuries to workers, but tens of thousands of residents have had to seek medical attention in a refinery accident. This time we’re lucky.”
The Chemical Safety Board has identified the causes of many refinery incidents related to its history, including the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance, which injured at least two workers.
The incident involved multiple safety hazards discovered, including a severely erosed safety valve that allows flammable gases to penetrate dangerously into areas that are not needed. The board also found that large pieces were barely hitting tanks of hydrolic acid.
However, there is no guarantee that such investigation will occur in the Chevron Refinery explosion. The Trump administration proposed to sunset the 27-year-old federal agency from October 1st to remove the Chemical Safety Commission’s budget for this fiscal year. Environmental advocates say it’s a mistake.
“They are undermining their ability to prevent these accidents by robbing the federal government of accountability mechanisms,” Lyou said. “That’s a big concern. It’s not politics. Democrats and Republicans live around Chevron refineries, and they both want to make sure the refineries are running safely.”
Without federal regulators, the South Coast Air Quality Control District investigates potential violations of air quality regulations and allows conditions. The refinery must also submit a report within 30 days to analyze potential causes and equipment failures.
So far, the aviation district says the fires have come from the Isomax water action unit, which uses hydrogen to refine oil into jet fuel and diesel. Aerial monitors at the refinery detected chemical spikes in the air after the fire broke out, but air district officials say conditions returned to normal levels a few hours later.
Environmental advocates say the extent of fallout may not be known until a larger investigation into air quality monitors can be made.
“We were very surprised that the aviation district reported that they had not seen any severely high levels of pollution,” said Julia May, a California-based nonprofit scientist, for a better environment. “Sometimes, in a fire in such a large refinery, it goes straight up. But the smoke drops in other areas. And that’s a lot of pollution going somewhere.”
Local and federal records show that Chevron’s facilities have been cited multiple times for environmental and safety violations.
The South Coast Air Quality Control District has issued 13 notices of violations in the last 12 months, with 46 in the last five years. Most recently, on September 22, the airline district cited the facility for a large chemical leak and was unable to keep its equipment in proper working condition.
In August, Chevron representatives also sought generosity from the air district when assessing compliance with air quality regulations during work to remove unnecessary buildups within the furnace pipes.
OSHA records show that the agency has conducted at least 15 inspections at Chevron refineries in El Segundo over the past decade, identifying 17 violations.
In September 2023, OSHA issued citations related to the conduct of fever prevention requirements, ladderway guardrails, and in-depth hazard analysis. This is an internal assessment aimed at controlling fires, explosions and chemical releases.
After conducting a scheduled inspection of the Chevron refinery in October 2022, OSHA records show that employers identified “serious” violations of institutional standards requiring that employers “develop, implement and maintain safe working practices to prevent or control danger.” Controls entry into dangerous work areas.
It is unclear whether OSHA slashed staff will investigate a refinery fire on Thursday amid government shutdowns. OSHA’s media office phone number went straight to the recorded message that the line was not monitored and that “certain government activities have been suspended due to loss of funds and cannot respond to your message at this time.”
For some environmentalists, the Chevron refinery fires underline why there is a need to move completely from fossil fuels.
“They (refineries) have good workers and great fire departments, which is what May, a senior scientist in the community for a better environment, said: “We’re talking about how we’re doing.”
“When something goes wrong, you can go wild. They did a great job of controlling it. But do we really want outdated, dirty energy in our community?”
