U.S. Steel Corp. (NYSE:X) had a lawsuit filed against them today by three contract workers who received injuries from an explosion at the Clairton coke works plant on July 14, 2010.
The lawsuit claims manager at the plant pressured them to continue their work even though alarms went off warnings of high levels of gas.
According to the complaint, two workers were "blanking" a 30-inch line - inserting a thin metal disk between the joints of a pipe to shut off the flow of gas - to work on a piece of equipment called a pre-heater that warms the gas. They did so under the direction of U.S. Steel supervisors, the suit claims.
"Shortly after Lentz and Firestone began carrying out U.S. Steel's plan, highly explosive coke oven gas began leaking from the pipe where the 'blank' was being inserted and gas level alarms began to sound and flash in the area. Rather than evacuating employees or stopping the job, U.S. Steel management employees intentionally ignored the danger of explosion and simply turned off the alarms and signaled for the men to keep working."
Not long afterwards, according to the lawsuit, the explosion occurred.
Interestingly, employees for U.S. Steel have filed a lawsuit against Power Piping, the contractor which the injured workers worked for, saying the injured workers created unsafe work conditions during the blanking process.
No comments:
Post a Comment