What the Watson Grinding Explosion Teaches Us About Process Safety

Listen, our rip from the headlines is going to be the topic of this particular podcast session.

So a lot of conversations being going on this past week out of a major verdict out of Houston down in Harris County, going back to an incident that has really been talked about a lot in the safety and legal circles, which is the Watson grinding explosion back in 2020.

Many of our listeners that keep up with the Chemical Safety Board probably have read about that incident.

At least we've seen some LinkedIn posts about that incident.

The Chemical Safety Board came out with the results of their investigation, and we're going to walk through that incident because this is what happens when things get beyond your fifth line.

We injured workers.

We killed workers.

We killed people in the community.

We burned down people's houses and their businesses.

And last week, the jury got to speak.

The jury wasn't happy.

And the jury was not happy.

So tell us about this incident for those of us that didn't read about it on the CSB.

And 2020 was COVID, right? It was during the COVID

era? It was.

It was.

So Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, what they did was they operated a facility in Houston that used propylene.

which is part of a thermal spray coating process.

And they have a lot of different applications for that, including the Defense Department, NASA, some other commercial applications, aircraft thing.

Well, during the evening of January the 23rd, 2020, a hose assembly disconnected.

And the propylene began leaking into the coating building.

And the leak continued all through the night.

People went home and it kept going.

Early in the morning, explosive concentrations, as you can imagine, accumulated inside that building.

And what's particularly troubling is there were warning signs that this could happen.