`atom Bomb' Had Been Expected For Years
Illawarra Mercury
Friday June 29, 2001
The locals called the Longford, Victoria gas plant ``the atom bomb".
They feared an explosion, a fire, a disaster.
But for almost 30 years things had gone along comparatively smoothly at the complex run by the international oil giant Esso.
So much so that the people who worked and lived around it had come to accept the danger and when things finally went wrong, the ``disaster waiting to happen" cliche seemed too trite.
It doesn't now.
Esso, according to a Supreme Court jury, allowed the situation to develop which led to the disaster.
The Longford plant blew up on September 25, 1998, killing two men, disrupting Victoria's gas supplies for two weeks and costing industry as much as $1.5billion.
In Melbourne yesterday, a jury found Esso guilty of 11 criminal charges laid under Occupational Health and Safety legislation.
The verdict shows that what happened at Longford in that grand final week was, in fact, a disaster in waiting, but one that no-one saw coming.
The Longford crisis began when the metal cover of a 14-tonne tank peeled open.
Gas inside burst out with such force that it blew a hole 2m deep in the ground and fired gravel like bullets all over the plant.
In little more than a minute, escaping gas had spewed out across the plant until it ignited and blew the place up.
It is unclear whether Ray Wilson, a maintenance superintendent with 30 years experience at the plant, and John Lowery, a maintenance supervisor with some 23 years behind him, died in that first fierce eruption of gas or in the violent explosion which followed.
In plain terms, the explosion occurred because the night of September 24 was one of the coldest that year and the demand from Victorian households for gas led to operators at Longford cranking up the flow from Bass Strait.
The equipment couldn't handle the load, the workers weren't well enough trained and the system failed.
© 2001 Illawarra Mercury
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