Survivor of Blast at Well Site Emphasizes Need to Follow Safety Procedures
From The Intelligencer/Wheeling News Register:
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You can read the entire article here.There's no sense trying to talk him out of it, Brad Livingston thought as he and his co-worker approached the drip tanks at the western Oklahoma oil well site where they were welding on a September morning in 1991. No one will know, anyway.Within minutes, his co-worker, Tracy Daves, was dead and Livingston was fighting for his life with burns covering more than 60 percent of his body after the site was rocked by an explosion he knows didn't have to happen - an explosion that took place because they took a shortcut that would have saved them, at most, three minutes.Livingston, who lives in Elkhart, Kan., shared his experience with natural gas industry workers from around the region Tuesday during the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association's inaugural ShaleSafe Conference and Expo, which runs through today at Oglebay Park's Wilson Lodge.Rather than check the liquid level in the tank themselves to determine whether it was safe to proceed, Livingston said, they chose to take the word of a pumper on site who said it was high enough. He had reservations, but was well aware of his co-workers stubbornness and didn't feel like dealing with it.
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