BLAST ROCKS SAINT JOHN
Four people suffered minor injuries after an explosion at an oil refinery shook much of the city
SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A massive oil refinery blast shook this historic port city on Monday, sending flames and black smoke high into the sky but causing only four minor injuries — leaving officials relieved it wasn’t far worse.
“We’re very grateful today — and being Thanksgiving, I think it’s appropriate,” Kevin Scott, Irving Oil’s chief refining and supply officer, told reporters at an afternoon briefing after a tense day. “Very fortunate they had only minor injuries.”
Saint John residents described feeling an explosion at about 10:15 a.m. local time, at Irving’s refinery on the city’s east side.
“My whole house shook. I thought my furnace had exploded,” said Litsa Daeres, 34, who opened her curtains and saw the flames and thick, black smoke.
Scott said there had been a malfunction in the refinery’s diesel treating unit, where sulphur is removed from diesel fuel.
One worker at the refinery, who didn’t want to be identified, said the initial blast had been enough to knock him down.
“There was quite a shock wave when the blast happened,” he said as he left with coworkers hours afterward.
There were as many as 3,000 workers at the refinery Monday — but most of the facility was shut down for major maintenance, and nearly all of the workers were contractors working on the turnaround.
Scott said the unit was quickly shut down after the blast.
“The fire did take a number of hours to extinguish, with some of the material that had leaked into the area of the unit that was affected. At times, we were letting that just safely extinguish itself,” he said.
Most of the minor injuries involved contractors, not Irving staff, he said.
The refinery is near several residential neighbourhoods, and is about five kilometres from the city core, known as Uptown.
According to the Irving Oil website, the refinery produces more than 320,000 barrels of “finished energy products” every day, with more than half going to the U.S. northeast. Scott said the company hopes to minimize the impact on clients.
At 4 p.m. local time, residents were still being asked to stay in their homes, and nearby streets remained closed. But District Chief Mike Carr of the Saint John fire department said that other than the smoke, there were no air-quality concerns.
“At this time, the incident is stabilized,” he said.
The thick black plume of smoke earlier in the day had been cause for concern for Gordon Dalzell, who lives in the nearby subdivision of Chaplain Heights — but the bigger issue, he said, is the other pollutants in the air that can be neither seen nor smelled.
Dalzell, the chair of Saint John’s Citizens Coalition for Clean Air, said the refinery emits many different types of “volatile organic compounds” into the air — organic chemicals that have a high vapour pressure and can be hazardous to human health.
“I worry more about what you can’t see in terms of pollution that comes from the refinery,” he said. “The pollutants you can’t see or smell, they’re the ones that are of great, great concern on a regular basis.”
Dalzell said he was grateful that nobody was seriously injured, but he hopes the incident will help stakeholders reconsider the continued use of fossil fuels when greener options are available.
Nate Guimond, 36, said he was doing house repairs when he looked outside and saw the scene.
“There was thick pitch-black smoke mixed with white smoke,” he said. “I heard a rumbling, roaring sound.”
He decided to drive by the refinery, and said he was nearby when he felt the vibrations of what he assumed was a second explosion.
Michael Steeves said he was about a kilometre away when he saw flames high in the air. He said the incident reminded him of an event in the late 1990s, when an explosion at the same refinery killed one person.