| Charlie Morecraft's Story |
Charlie worked in an Exxon oil refinery for 27 years. His last position
was as an operator, refining raw product into gasoline.
He knew the procedures and safety rules. "I had been to more
safety meetings and on more safety courses than I can remember,"
he says. "I would wear sunglasses to safety sessions so that
you couldn't tell whether I was asleep or not. "As for protective
equipment . . . a bunch of us guys in our refinery considered it
'cool' not to wear all the safety gear issued. We thought we were
a tough, macho bunch. We modified our PPE to suit our image. We
were issued flame-retardant clothing but, whenever we were invisible
to the bosses, wore them with cut-off sleeves to make the shirts
more comfortable and cooler. We weren't going to be seen traipsing
around in a lot of gear that made us look soft.
"Oh yes, there was this guy Ray I worked with. He always wore
his safety gear properly. Heck, he was so soft he actually listened
at safety meetings. We used to tease him. Ray took it in good part,
but he also wore his safety gear.
"Then something happened one night that turned my life upside
down, destroyed a large part of an Exxon installation and gave me
all the time in the world to think of my attitude to safety, and
how stupid, stupid, stupid I had been.
"I had assumed the night shift position—leaning back
in my chair, feet up on the desk, when the call came in: 'A blank
needs to be removed from a line'.
"I had done this job a thousand times. I jumped into my truck
and drove over—in my cut off flame-retardant shirt, and without
my safety glasses.
"When I got to the site, I left my truck running and ran up
to the valves.
"The valves leaked. Exxon had planned to replace them during
the next shutdown. Meanwhile there was a procedure in place so you
could do the job safely—wear proper PPE, shut off your vehicle's
internal combustion engine, check the pressure, close valves.
"I wasn't going to tick off all the safety checks; it would
take me all night. I wanted to get back to my 'comfortable' position.
But when I went to fix the problem, the highly flammable petroleum
product in the line unexpectedly surged up, splashed me in the eyes
and drenched my shirt.
"I was temporarily blinded. When my eyes cleared, I saw what
was happening, and raced to get out fast. I thought, 'Oh my God—the
truck is running!' I knew what was going to happen next. I could
feel it. As I sprinted past the truck, the chemical vapors hit the
truck's ignition system."
The truck exploded in a ball of flame that engulfed Charlie. He
dived into a puddle of water to put himself out. Then, in a state
of shock and panic, Charlie watched as the refinery started to go
up in flames. He ran around frantically trying to shut off valves,
all the while thinking, "Oh boy, here goes my job — I'm
going to be fired for this one." Fire alarms went off, emergency
crews rushed to the scene, and Charlie, overcome by his injuries,
sank to the ground.
"It was only after I was in the ambulance that the pain started
to come. It came in wave upon wave. My arms, up to where I had cut
off my flame retardant clothing, were charcoal black. They puffed
up in huge blisters right before my eyes. My back was burned where
my shirt was blown off, and my face, which should have been partly
protected by goggles, was also badly burned.
"I remember screaming at the ambulance attendants, 'Let me
die! Please let me die!'
Charlie's mother came into his hospital room that night. "She
looked at me and said, 'Oh thank God! This isn't my son.' She didn't
recognize me."
Charlie received burns to nearly 50% of his body. Once he was stabilized,
he was sent to one of the country's finest burn units for rehabilitation.
"When rehabilitation starts, the pain and agony of being burned
is repeated over and over," Charlie recalls. "The terrible
process is called 'debriding'. It has to be done, to prevent the
growth of scar tissue that would turn you into a complete cripple.
They lower you into a tank containing a combination of water, Clorox
and antibiotics. Then they peel off, first the dead burned skin,
and then, day after day, the new scabs as they form.
"The people who do that work are true heroes," says Charlie.
"I do not know how they bear to hear the screams of their patients.
"For me, the worst part was when they took me out of the tank
and put me back in my room. I lay there in agony, knowing that the
next day I was going right back into those tanks."
Charlie endured three months in and out of debriding tanks.
This was followed by another five years in hospital, and over 50
operations.
"But it was not only me who suffered," Charlie reminisces.
"My family went through the living hell of seeing me suffer,
while their own lives were completely disrupted. My family had to
wonder if I would survive the first few days. Then they had to cope
with living and growing up for five long years while their father,
husband and son was a helpless invalid, in and out of hospital.
"And for what?" Charlie asks. "Because I didn't want
to look stupid in front of my friends. I didn't want to be labeled
a 'safety suck'.
"My attitude to safety cost my family and me all that suffering,"
Charlie says. "I could have worn proper protective equipment,
but I didn't. I could have worn eye protection that night, but I
didn't. I could have followed correct safety procedure that night,
but I didn't.
"I wanted to be 'cool'. I wanted to be 'macho'.
"When I look at the scars that cover my arms and upper body,
I know there was nothing macho in what I did and didn't do.
There was nothing heroic or cool in costing my family all that needless
suffering.
"In long months that turned into years in hospitals, I thought
long and hard about how so many other workers take chances like
me, how many have the same attitude I had to safety, but who so
far are being lucky. Somewhere along the line I decided that I wanted
to shake those people up, to make it my mission to change people's
attitude about safety.
"Some people have called me a hero, but I always think of Ray;
Ray, who followed all the safety rules. No matter what anybody said
to him, or what names we called him, he wore his safety gear on
every shift. Ray, who got to go back to his family every night.
"Who is the real hero?" |
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