New details in Gibson blast

As federal safety officials continue to investigate a fatal Gibson pipeline plant explosion, questions have emerged concerning the amount of time that passed before a surviving victim was rescued.

Michael Hill, a 56-year-old machinist, badly burned, critically injured and believed conscious, languished within the debris-strewn blast site for as long as two hours before firefighters were permitted to remove him. He died four days later at University Medical Center in New Orleans.

Officials confirm that a “take-over” of the scene by Louisiana State Police hazardous materials technicians occurred after firefighters had already established a rescue plan and were ready to retrieve Hill.

State Police and Terrebonne Parish emergency operations officials stand by the decisions that were made, accepting that state laws mandated them. But relatives of Hill and other victims, as well as some rescue workers, are not on board.

“Knowing our father laid in the plant, hurt, burned, broken, and asking for help for hours is sickening,” said his daughter, Kristian Hill Elliott, who is a nurse practitioner in the family’s home town of Paris, Tenn. “As a healthcare provider myself and someone with over a decade of experience in emergency services, it is unacceptable. The delay caused by the State Police attempting to take over incident command after rescue efforts were already underway is not part of a lifesaving measure.”

The Oct. 8 incident at the Williams Pipeline Company natural gas compression plant on Bayou Black Drive resulted in the deaths of Hill, fellow contract workers Sam Brinlee, Casey Ordoyne and Jason Phillippe, and severe injury to another contractor, Wayne Plaisance, who was critically injured.

First-responders and emergency managers won praise for their work at the scene, along with the Terrebonne Parish disaster plan that governed the operation, classified as a hazardous materials incident because it involved natural gas.

Interviews with emergency management officials and experts locally and throughout the U.S., conducted over the past month, show agreement that delays of rescues at hazardous materials incidents are a frustrating but necessary evil, due to safeguards that must be taken to protect the lives of emergency workers and the public at large.

“THEY HELD US BACK”

At the Williams site, responders said, a rescue plan was already developed and required safety assessments completed with firefighters ready to make entry to the “hot zone” and rescue Hill within 45 minutes of their arrival.

As they prepared to move in, State Police hazardous materials technicians arrived, and the firefighters were ordered to stand down.

Those state troopers – highly trained and qualified hazardous materials experts – then reviewed and tweaked the rescue plan. The actual time spent on the review by troopers, according to the best available fire service information sources, was no longer than 20 minutes. But that 20 minutes, some note, was in addition to the time it took for firefighters to suit up, get their gear working and otherwise prepare yet again for entry. That meant the added time, according to some estimates, was over an hour.

The dominance that the State Police have, embodied in law, was not at the time known to many of the fire responders.

“The State Police, as soon as they show up, they said ‘hey, stop, you’re not going in just yet,’” said one rescue worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the news media. “They held us back. It was a one-sided conversation. Tempers started flaring.’”

Louisiana’s laws, both within legislatively-created statutes and agency-created administrative codes, make clear that the buck stops with the State Police at any hazardous materials incident.

Some responders question whether that framework is realistic or necessary, considering how much emergency services have changed over the decades since that law began its development, and the higher levels of hazardous materials education and certification local fire officials have attained.

While they respect the expertise of State Police technicians, and are aware that they can be an invaluable resource, some firefighters also say they don’t believe the law – barring the most unusual of circumstances – intended for the State Police to order that a life-saving effort already in progress be delayed or abandoned.

“We routinely put our lives on the line to save lives,” one firefighter said when asked about decisions made at the Williams site. “How many times do we go into a burning house to save property, and we can’t go in here to save a man?”

STATE POLICE IN CONTROL

Terrebonne Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Earl Eues, whose office was intricately involved with the operation, said the authority of State Police at such a scene is unquestionable, even if the oversight results in extra time being taken.

“When the State Police arrive on the scene they are in control,” said Eues. “They wanted to make sure the plan to go in and get the guy was adequate enough so that nobody else would get hurt. They reviewed that plan again.”

Had firefighters already gone in to retrieve Hill and State Police then showed up, Eues acknowledged, the rescue would have likely continued uninterrupted.

“He happened to show up at the same time we were fixing to go in,” Eues said, referring to one of the State Police technicians. “At that point he said ‘I want to know what the plan is,’ because he is responsible for the scene.”

Protocols for dealing with hazardous materials, mass casualties and other critical emergencies are incorporated into a National Incident Management System. Local jurisdictions are required to comport with the protocols to qualify for federal funding. Eues and other Louisiana emergency managers maintain that their rules and practices are inherently compliant, and that no conflict exists between the protocols and the state laws that give specially-qualified troopers a trump card.

An argument can be made, some responders to the Williams incident said, that the state’s additional layer of State Police oversight – clearly laid out in Title 30 of Louisiana’s Revised Statutes and in several provisions of its Administrative Code – is superfluous, and runs counter to NIMS principles, which stress continuity of command at a scene.

Lt. Lee Lewis of the State Police Transportation and Environmental Safety Section, stands by decisions his troopers made to review the plan firefighters came up with, something he says they were mandated to do by law once arriving at the scene.

“Every incident is different and no two incidents are the same,” said Lewis, who maintains that the operation, from a public safety standpoint, was a success. “Everything went smoothly.”

The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is investigating the blast, as to its cause. PHMSA spokesman Damon Hill, said last week that no determinations have been made.

WILLIAMS STILL CLOSED

The portion of the gas pipeline that includes the Williams site is likely to remain closed under orders of PHMSA into the first quarter of 2016, although a full complement of Williams’ employees remains working there. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating, and has six months under federal rules to reach a conclusion as to whether any OSHA violations have occurred.

The Williams plant is on a small leg of the Transcontinental Gulf-Atlantic Pipeline, a 10,000-mile system that carries natural gas from Texas to New York.

According to Christopher Stockton, a Williams spokesman, contractors from Danos in Houma and Furmanite, located in Geismer, were doing “routine maintenance” on a slug catcher, a series of horizontal pipes that separate waste elements from incoming natural gas as it heads toward the main conduits.

The pipeline was shut in on Oct. 4 for maintenance, said Stockton, meaning it was free of natural gas.

Attorneys for the families of Phillippe and Brinlee have filed a lawsuit claiming wrongful death, and a suit for damages has been filed on behalf of Plaisance.

Tommy Servos, an attorney with Zehl and Associates in Houston, has alleged that according to witness accounts given so far, the Danos workers were performing fitting and welding work. ES&H, another contracting firm, was responsible for “gas-freeing” the worksite. Furmanite America was hired by Danos to plug off the pipeline at locations where welding would be performed.

The line, Servos has alleged, was not properly made gas-free nor was it properly plugged. Additionally, allegations have been made that a Williams employee was “tampering” with the slug catcher, shortly before the blast.

Furmanite, ES&H and Williams are named in the pending suits. None has yet answered the allegations, and they would not discuss the matter.

INCIDENT COMMAND

Firefighters from the West Terrebonne Volunteer Fire Department and the Bayou Black Volunteer Fire Department were on the scene within minutes of being dispatched, following a 911 call at 10:59 a.m., response records show.

According to interviews with firefighters and other responders, two injured Williams workers carried out one of the severely hurt men. Firefighters were told another worker was alive and possibly conscious – most likely Hill – and that three workers were presumed dead.

By 11:20 a.m. West Terrebonne Chief Johnny Bush set up an incident command, in accordance with guidelines. An Acadian Airmed helicopter had touched down by 11:25, and the critically injured employee was whisked off to a hospital after being stabilized on the ground.

State Police technicians were en route and expected to be there before Noon. Meanwhile there was still visible flame, and thick black smoke spiraled above Gibson.

Among the determinations Bush had to make – with the team he assembled, including a representative of the Williams firm – were the risk of re-ignition, additional explosive potential, and precisely what kind of substances were being released as a result of the incident.

A key consideration for an incident commander is whether rescue poses an undue risk to firefighters and other responders, as well as whether the public at large could be further endangered. Bush’s department as well as Bayou Black had drilled at the Williams location before; they expressed familiarity with the material likely involved, and took further risk assessment steps.

Tony Bersegay, chief of the Bayou Black Fire Department, rode into the area immediately adjoining the “hot zone” on a golf cart, to further determine risk, firefighters said. Bersegay was approached for information for this story however he refused comment.

The initial okay for firefighters to move in for a rescue is not documented in any of the records received by The Times. However, a State Police log shows that two technicians, Jimmy Hicks and

Shone Jackson, were there prior to noon, which would have coincided with the pullback of firefighters from the rescue attempt.

CRITICAL CONDITION

What is known from the records is that at 12:38 p.m. firefighters were preparing for entry to the hot zone; their entry was delayed again, possibly while some other fire-ground preparations were made. By 12:48 p.m. firefighters were unquestionably within the hot zone, and a back-up team was ordered bring a gurney as close as was practicable to the place where firefighters would come to, at the edge of the hot zone, with Hill.

“We rescued him, we are trying to drag him and pull him,” a firefighter says during a radio transmission at that time.

There was still residual fire to the rear of where rescuers were operating, but the priority at that point was the rescue, recordings reveal.

“We are coming out with him on the gurney at this time,” a firefighter said on the radio, disclosing that Hill’s status was “critical.”

“He is going in and out of consciousness, he’s got third degree burns to 80 or 90 percent of his body, his clothes is burnt completely off,” the firefighter relayed to the command center.

One firefighter was felled by heat exhaustion, likely related to the strenuous nature of the rescue, and treated at the scene.

Firefighters later confirmed that as he was taken from the scene, he repeatedly thanked his rescuers. He is believed to have undergone some form of decontamination procedure. At 1:30 p.m., according to Acadian Ambulance records, a ground ambulance left the scene with a patient on board.

An additional helicopter that had earlier been standing by was called away to a wreck on La. Highway 20, elsewhere in Gibson, according to emergency workers.

Family members confirm that after treatment at Terrebonne General Medical Center Hill was airlifted to University Hospital. Family members traveled from Tennessee to be with him as he fought for life there. A brain scan at University, Kristian Elliot said, revealed full brain function despite continued unconsciousness.

Ultimately, according to the Terrebonne Parish Coroner, his cause of death was not the burns, but physical trauma. He died on Oct. 12, and was returned to Tennessee where his family laid him to rest at Hill Crest Cemetery. Fellow Furmanite employees served as pallbearers.

Hill’s family has not yet engaged an attorney, but is looking at their options.

At the fire scene, operations continued on the afternoon of Oct. 8, with removals made of the three deceased workers. Tommy Servos said he does not know if they had remained alive for any period of time after the blast, as he has not yet received death certificates or autopsy reports.

NO CHANGE FORESEEN

The question of whether the State Police trump card at hazardous materials incidents should continue is a subject of debate. Gibson-area firefighters, and some in the fire service in other areas of Terrebonne Parish, say the expertise State Police technicians bring to an emergency is important, and that the law ensures the buck stopping at an unquestionably proper place.

Others say the practical considerations – using the delay in reaching Hill as an example – indicate that some other approach is needed. Among points brought up by firefighters is the absence of State Police technicians, according to their recollections, from drills or other pre-plan activities in regard to the Williams site.

Some local lawmakers, told of the bare facts involving Hill, and informed of his family’s concerns, said they are not opposed to taking a look at state laws and regulations to see if there is room for improvement on how incident command is managed.

“I certainly believe that everyone did the very best they could,” said Joe Harrison R-Napoleonville, whose district includes Gibson. “I am always open to see what we could have done that would be better, not that I am saying what was done was wring, but if there are questions I would want to allay those questions, for the families.”

State officials who oversee emergency services don’t think a review is in order, including Mike Steele, spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

“GOHSEP does not recommend any procedural changes based on all of the safety factors for haz mat incidents,” Steele said.

FAMILY WANTS ACTION

Kristian Hlliott, who with her family is foreseeing a bleak Thanksgiving without the presence of the father who always came home for that holiday, has concerns not limited to the rescue effort. But she says the need for a review is to her quite evident.

“Louisiana needs to re-evaluate the standards and regulations in handling and responding to these types of situations in order for this not to happen again,” she said. “Given what I know at this point and what I personally witnessed at the bedside of my father, it is very possible that he would have survived had things happened more efficiently than they did. During a trauma to the body, the first hour is essential in stabilizing and developing a plan of care for the patient. His first hour was spent lying on the ground with smoke and flames while firefighters tried to rescue him but were called off by the State Police so they could review the situation … them knowing that our father was still inside, the second helicopter left the scene for another call. We know that we can’t bring our father back but we can use this to help save the lives and prevent this from happening to another family and to the co-workers that he loved so much. From what we do know this will require changes from the plant level all the way through legislation.” •

Williams crashCASEY GISCLAIR | THE TIMES