US investigators: Safety lapses led to explosion at Exxon’s Torrance refinery

April 26, 2016

The sequence of events that eventually led to the explosion at the refinery began on February 12, 2015, when problems with a piece of equipment called an expander caused the refinery’s fluid catalytic cracking, or FCC, unit to be put into a idled condition referred to as safe park. An ongoing investigation by the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) of the February 18, 2015, explosion at the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California, has uncovered multiple process safety management deficiencies that led to the accident and a serious near miss, the board said on Wednesday.