All posts by BenIndy

“It sounded like a bomb went off”: Residents react after White Lake refinery explosion

[Note from BenIndy: Another day, another refinery explosion. Take  a minute to review the drone footage available below. Particularly striking in this article was the resident quoted as admitting that she and many of her neighbors were unaware that they lived in close proximity to a refinery. This is not uncommon in refinery towns, including Benicia. What if there had been an urgent need to evacuate nearby residential neighborhoods? Situations like this demonstrate just how important clear, timely, and accurate communication between industrial/corporate interests, local government, local media, and the general public is to protecting the health and safety of refinery-town residents. An informed and engaged community is a safer and healthier community.]

CBS Detroit, by Luke Laster, November 26, 2023

WHITE LAKE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) – White Lake police and township fire officials are working to discover the cause of an explosion at a refinery plant in White Lake Friday night.

It happened shortly before 10:30 p.m. in the area of Young Road and Bogie Lake Road.

It took a few hours before crews put it out, and White Lake Township’s fire chief, John Holland, says they don’t yet know what caused the flames.

“Everything shook. I was afraid. I didn’t know what the heck was happening,” says White Lake resident Chelsea Vanhorn.

Vanhorn lives in Cedarbrook Estates, a mobile home park just over a mile away from the fossil fuel recovery plant owned and operated by Hound Resources.

“My plants fell off my shelves. I thought we got bombed,” Vanhorn said.

Following what Vanhorn said was the explosion that shook her home, other residents of the mobile home park found themselves outside with their phones rolling around 10:30 p.m. Friday. It was then that she caught a second explosion on camera.

She says she didn’t even know a refinery was nearby. Many of her neighbors didn’t know either.

“We all go down by the clubhouse, you know. Try to follow it to see what it is, and it was a huge fire. The biggest fire I’ve seen. It was huge and the blackest smoke. It was so black. It was very scary,” Vanhorn said.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Sierra Club Announces Opposition to New City in Solano County, Fairfield/Zoom Press Conference on Tues., Nov. 28, 10am

Sierra Club Calls Billionaires’ Plan ‘Clandestine Possession’ of Solano County Land

SUISUN, CA – The Sierra Club will announce at a press conference here Tuesday its opposition to Flannery LLC’s proposal for a new city in Solano County, characterizing the project as a “clandestine possession,” charging the California Forever Project ignores years of Smart Use planning and the voter approved Orderly Growth Initiative.

More details will be presented at a formal Press Conference, at the Plaza in front of the County offices at 675 W. Texas St. at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023.

By Zoom: Meeting ID: 698 093 8552  Passcode: G1QC0K https://us06web.zoom.us/j/6980938552?pwd=NYE6hCuacobYGngpaOuDDub1NRZFAh.1&omn=85049635473

The Flannery LLC is a corporation that secretly purchased more than 60,000 acres of Solano County agricultural land without disclosing its backers.

After Flannery LLC was outed as a cabal of billionaires, they have now floated a plan called California Forever which flies in the face of years of Smart Growth planning endangering Travis AFB, the Suisun Marsh and the largest existent agricultural area remaining in the Bay Area.

“By ignoring the current voter approved uses of land that Flannery has acquired in order to jack their investment’s economic return is nothing short of a hostile takeover,” said Sierra Club Solano Group Chair Princess Washington.

Washington added, “These land use rules have allowed for a harmonious relationship of agricultural uses and open space with the urban environment of the seven existing cities in Solano County. There will be an increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).”

Brandon Dawson, Sierra Club State Executive Director, said,  “This project will violate recent Statewide efforts including the Governor’s 30 by 30 project and various efforts to reduce Green House Gases.”

Contacts: Princess Washington – Chair Sierra Club Solano Group – (707) 333-7073 cessprinwashington@yahoo.com

Joe Feller – Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Executive Committee – (415) 902-3395

 

Ohio firefighters battle massive flames in containing oil refinery fire

[Note from BenIndy: Once again, from one refinery town another, Benicia surely empathizes and sympathizes with those impacted by this large refinery fire in Ohio that took 75 firefighters to contain. Impacts to nearby soil and waterways are currently under investigation. Remember, according to the WSJ, there ‘hasn’t been a major new oil refinery built in the U.S. since the 1970s, and many plants are more than 100 years old.’ That same article linked above also notes that, according to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, ‘2021 was the worst year for serious incidents at U.S. refineries since 2015, measured by hours worked, with the rate of so-called process-safety events 25% higher than in 2019 and 2020.’  As refineries continue to deteriorate, the rate of serious incidents seems likely to increase.]

November 22, 2023 

COLUMBUS — Ohio firefighters battled an oil refinery fire for several hours Tuesday night.

Columbus firefighters were dispatched just after 8 p.m. to GFL Columbus Refinery across from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and were put out after 10 p.m., according to our news partner WBNS in Columbus.

It is also located near John Glenn Columbus International Airport.

Firefighters had to deal with massive flames when they arrived at the scene.

Whitehall Division of Fire provided mutual aid and posted videos and photos of the fire on its social media page.

Columbus Fire Battalion Chief Jeffrey Geitter told WBNS crews worked to keep other surrounding tanks cool to keep the fire from spreading.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Stephen Golub: This Thanksgiving, Let’s Be Thankful for What We Don’t Have

By Stephen Golub, November 23, 2023, previously published in the Benicia Herald

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Each Thanksgiving, and whenever I need to remind myself to feel thankful, my mind turns to an interview I conducted in a Southeast Asian refugee camp decades ago…

Back in 1985, fresh out of law school, I was dispatched by a U.S. human rights group to document and write a report about a torrent of abuses against 370,000 Cambodians who had escaped across the border of their war-torn homeland to find precarious shelter in refugee camps in Thailand. Most had languished there since fleeing the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

The savagery threatening the refugees took appalling forms: unspeakable brutality by Thai soldiers assigned to protect them, by rampaging gangs of Cambodian bandits and by Cambodian resistance militias battling the Vietnamese occupation, ostensibly on their behalf; deadly shelling of the camps by Vietnamese artillery based just a few miles away, in Cambodia; and brutal repression in the few camps controlled by the remnants of the fanatical Khmer Rouge regime, which had once ruled their country in a reign of terror. 

Every day for over two weeks, I spent dawn to dusk interviewing as many victims as my (non-refugee) Cambodian interpreter/guide could find. At the end of the trip, in Bangkok, I met with a Thai general who dismissed his troops’ cruelty with the glib observation that “boys will be boys.”

That chat was a doozy. But an interview with a particular refugee stood out far more. The memory has both haunted and moved me over the years…

Darkness was descending on the largest refugee camp, Nong Samet, when a furious, feisty, elderly woman rushed up to my interpreter and me. She’d heard that we were seeking victims to interview. We met with her and her 15-year-old granddaughter in a bamboo hut. The first thing that caught my eye was the circular scar, a healed bullet wound, spanning the girl’s wrist.

Getting shot was not the most recent attack that she had suffered, however. Just a month before my visit, a Thai soldier had viciously assaulted the girl, apparently as punishment for her sneaking to a banned edge of the camp to get water. She described the crime through a sea of tears. The crippled wrist, crushed spirit and brutalized body seemed to encapsulate the terrors visited upon her people. 

Many months later, colleagues and press coverage informed me that my resulting report, along with other types of pressure, helped spark Thai government action to better protect the refugees. But the abuses did not come to an absolute end until 1993, when a peace treaty finally led to the Vietnamese army’s withdrawal from Cambodia, the camps’ closure and the refugees’ repatriation.

Why in the world am I recounting this story, from so long ago, on the cusp of Thursday’s happy holiday? 

Each Thanksgiving, we break bread with friends and family. We toast with those loved ones. We’re thankful for what we have, as well we should be. 

But we might also pause to be thankful for what we don’t have. 

By and large, in America and other privileged nations, we don’t have our lives filled by wars, starvation, devastation and repression that plague many parts of the globe. Most of us don’t have the hunger and poverty that mar the lives of millions of fellow Americans.

While giving thanks, perhaps we can pledge to take whatever small steps we can toward the cures for such ills, at home or abroad.

My point here, however, is not just about suffering. It’s also about the incredible human spirit, strength and courage that enable people to survive horrific situations and to help each other despite the dangers and deprivation they face.

I have no idea what became of the specific refugees I interviewed in Nong Samet and the other camps back in 1985. But I do know that the remarkable resilience of the Cambodians there enabled most of them to endure, so as to eventually return home safely or resettle here in America. 

With all of this in mind, this Thursday, I’ll reflect on a post-it note I wrote years ago. I still have it stuck to the corner of my laptop screen. 

I glance at the note almost every day. I particularly value it when I’m feeling less than thankful and need a reminder about my own blessed lot in life. 

The note reads, “The Girl at Nong Samet.”

So here’s a toast to whatever you do to remain thankful throughout the year. And Happy Thanksgiving. 


MORE POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB: