Plant Explosions

Video Transcription:

Cindy Speaker: Last week on State Law TV News, we shared a story about big business and how they made a decision to value profits over the safety of their employees.  Today, we have a similar story and the State of Texas, plant explosions are relatively common occurrence.  I spoke with Houston attorney, Terry Bryant about this topic and his experience representing victims of plant explosions.  Here is what he had to say.

Terry Bryant: These big companies that own the chemical plants tend to minimize the nature and extent of the injuries.  Typically, what happens is they say, just shelter employees and then a few hours later, they’ll say everything is fine, when in fact sometimes people are injured or even killed.  We had one case involving a plant explosion in which the person who died in the plant explosion was not discovered for a period of three or four hours after the blast.  In fact, the company waived the fire department off, said they could go home and then they have to call them back and tell them that someone had actually passed away from the explosion.

Cindy Speaker: I can’t imagine how a company could be unaware of the fact that a company employee died in an explosion at their plant and actually send fire company away.  What does that say about big business and their commitment to safety?

Terry Bryant: It seems like we’re having plant explosions every week now.  There is one last week and now, there is another one this week.  When you live in Houston, you had to be careful and be aware that something like that could happen at any time, be aware that these companies all talk about safety and it’s my believe that that’s al they do.  They just talk about it and the real safety issues are not addressed after these plants, and in the mean time, people are hurt because of the lack of safety in each particular plant.

Cindy Speaker: This is Cindy Speaker for State Law TV News.