“That’s what insurance is for, right?” — Liam Dai (and thousands of others) There was recently a fire at a popular business in south Saint Louis city that was widely reported on the local news. As with many fires that happen here in Saint Louis, someone set up a GoFundMe fund to help the business [...]
“If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.” — Kurt Lewin All change should be managed; in any endeavor, under any circumstances. When people ask about management of change, however, they are usually talking about the specific regulatory requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and its Process Safety Management [...]
“Bureaucracy and compliance now seem less about managing the safety of the workers we are responsible for, and more about managing the liability of the people they work for.” — Sidney Dekker One of the foundations of process safety is that we learn from experience. Because relevant experience comes from making mistakes and facing failures, [...]
“Words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.” — Felix Frankfurter One of my favorite things about summer is all the fresh fruits and vegetables. Especially strawberries in June and blackberries in July. “Well, [...]
“In limits, there is freedom.” — Julia Cameron There is great comfort in knowing that even the most hazardous substances have safe limits. One molecule of a substance is not enough to be hazardous. However, there is some concentration—especially for gases and vapors—that is too high to be exposed to safely. A lot of effort [...]
“I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future.” — Howard Schutz A chemical incident in Southern California unfolded over the 2026 Memorial Day Weekend that captured the attention of every major [...]
“Do you fix a wheel that isn’t broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses?” — Jodi Picoult During the week beginning Thursday, May 21, 2026, and going over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, our phones lit up with queries from friends and acquaintances about a series of chemical mishaps and disasters that got [...]
“When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.” — Norm Crosby During the 15 years I have lived in the city of Saint Louis, I’ve been called for jury duty four times. The most recent was just [...]
“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” -Joseph Joubert On a busy afternoon, maintenance flagged a small leak on a piece of equipment, nothing urgent, but something that required a shutdown to fix properly. Operations pushed back. So, a temporary workaround was put in place, extra checks were [...]
“It was not uncommon; it’s what they do. But there was something going on that was different.” — C.W.Sigman, Director of Kanawha County Emergency Management At about 9:30 am on Wednesday morning, April 22, 2026, two chemicals reacted to form hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas, at the small Catalyst Refiners facility in Institute, West Virginia. [...]
