To the editor: I’m a third-generation South Bay resident. My father was raised in El Segundo. His father labored for Customary Oil for years, and my father and my uncles labored summer season jobs on the refinery. Customary Oil, now Chevron, appeared to have been a accountable neighborhood member.
I grew up a block from Customary Oil’s Rosecrans Ave. boundary. One in all my earlier childhood recollections was the time lightning struck an oil storage tank throughout Rosecrans. That fireplace burnt for days, the burning tank spewing black, sooty smoke.
How a lot lung injury did that trigger to residents, notably kids and the aged? However not many questioned the hurt to the neighborhood Customary Oil might need been inflicting within the Sixties.
Nonetheless, final week, as we heard, felt and noticed what gave the impression to be a terrifying precursor to the apocalypse from our home seven blocks away, the query of attainable hurt and danger from a serious oil producer nestled between residential communities and Los Angeles Worldwide Airport grew to become extra pressing (“‘I assumed we received nuked or one thing.’ Large explosion, fireplace rocks El Segundo refinery,” Oct. 3). We have been lucky the winds have been delicate and blowing off the ocean, as I concern what might need occurred if the winds have been out of the east.
Nonetheless, after studying a Los Angeles Instances article in regards to the explosion that listed the numerous infractions by Chevron that our communities have been uncovered to over current years (“Chevron’s El Segundo refinery has a historical past of security and environmental violations,” Oct. 4), I query the security of permitting main refineries to stay in extremely populated areas, particularly when it appears the refineries get little or no greater than a slap on the wrist regardless of potential risks of the incidents.
This isn’t a political subject. This is a matter of the well being and security of the encircling inhabitants. Refineries, or different harmful industries, shouldn’t be capable of function in a manner which will trigger hurt to others.
Arduous questions as to the trigger and fixes have to be requested. If the federal authorities dodges this central obligation, the state should step in. Refineries shouldn’t get a clean verify.
Kathryn Grey, Manhattan Seaside
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To the editor: Whereas the strictest security protocols are after all a should, we residents of El Segundo and Manhattan Seaside simply need to stay with the truth that a gas refinery is a unstable place that even probably the most intricate laws can’t fully mitigate (“El Segundo was born by oil. The huge refinery fireplace leaves residents rattled,” Oct. 3).
As a longtime resident of Manhattan Seaside who lives about half a mile from the refinery, I nonetheless bear in mind what occurred in September of 1968. Lightning struck a big floor oil storage tank on the facility (then Customary Oil), inflicting the oil to ignite in an explosion and fireplace. Firefighters used water and foam to no avail, so they simply determined to let it burn itself out. The burnout lasted 13 days, throughout which evening was changed into day by the excessive flames and day was changed into evening by the thick black smoke.
This was a freak act of nature that no security guidelines may have prevented. For us residing close by the refinery, it’s a part of the deal, however I might by no means wish to stay anyplace else.
Pete Skacan, Manhattan Seaside
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To the editor: If state lawmakers wanted an indication that their invoice boosting oil drilling to appease refineries was ill-advised, they received it final Thursday evening within the type of towering flames.
The blast and inferno was at the least the fifth fireplace at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery since 2016, a part of an extended historical past of refinery incidents in California.
Communities know this all too effectively, however lawmakers appear to have forgotten that entrenching oil and gasoline manufacturing is disastrous for folks’s well being, the setting and the economic system. Whilst air high quality officers reported spikes of harmful chemical substances from the fireplace, economists warned it could spike gasoline costs.
Each time our leaders cave to the unstable, hazardous fossil gas trade, Californians undergo for it. It’s time to hurry the transition to wash vitality and get off oil and gasoline for good.
Christina Scaringe, Sacramento
This author is California local weather coverage director on the Heart for Organic Variety.
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To the editor: I grew up in Manhattan Seaside within the Nineteen Fifties. I lived just some miles from the Chevron refinery in El Segundo. Even then, our nickname for El Segundo was “El Stinko.” Through the years, that they had a number of huge fires and plenty of unhealthy odors. Sadly, nothing new right here.
Mike Reardon, Fallbrook
