Catalyst

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing is not an easy task. For one thing, there is too much time alone. For another, there are too many opportunities to question one’s work—to wonder if it is any good or if the endeavor is worth pursuing. Had it not been for the constant encouragement of a few people, I don’t know that I would have had the fortitude to finish. My mother was one of those people. Simply put, that’s what moms are for. And although I don’t think her praise of my work was warranted, I always appreciated hearing it. Another source of steadfast encouragement was Stephen P., who was always there, always positive, and always willing to listen.

For Hannah and Molly, so that they may know me better.

Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Rudyard Kipling

The Ballad of East and West

Prologue

KEVIN PHENIX AWOKE WITH A JOLT. He stared into the darkness. In a way, he felt as if he were standing on the edge of an endless black abyss, because that was where, unwittingly, he found himself. Kevin had set the alarm for 4:30 a.m., but, as usual, he hadn’t needed it. He had an internal clock that almost always awakened him as circumstances required.

Kevin turned his head from side to side against the softness of his pillow. Light from the small garden lamps streamed through the miniblinds hung on the French doors at the opposite end of the room and left diagonal strips on the wall. He rolled over on his side.

Knowing he would not be able to go back to sleep, Kevin slid out from under the cotton sheet. Wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, he started his daily routine of push-ups and ab crunches. After the first set of fifty, he paused and thought of flipping on the weather report, but he knew what it would be. It was June 21, the first day of summer and the longest day of the year—and in Houston, Texas, that meant only one thing: it was going to be hot and humid. Just like yesterday had been and just like tomorrow was going to be. Another steamy, hot day in a long line of steamy, hot days that started in May—or even April, sometimes—and extended well into October.

Kevin splashed warm water on his face and then toweled dry. It was time to get to work. Wondering what might have happened on the night shift, he felt a certain urgency. The ethylene unit hadn’t been running well lately. And if things were going to go wrong, it was going to happen at night. Kevin had learned that while working as an operator—what he called his graduate education. Most people had thought he was crazy—a guy with an engineering degree working as an operator. But Kevin didn’t care. He knew how important that time was. Besides, he had only done it for a couple of years. It was like getting a master’s degree in reality. Books and theories were great, but there was no substitute for having to control a runaway reaction in the middle of the night having no one to rely on but yourself.

Kevin slipped on a pair of fire-resistant coveralls. Immediately, the odor of the oil-soaked material reminded him of the ethylene unit and how it smelled in the predawn hours. He laced up his steel-toed work boots; gathered up his phone, pager, wallet, and everything else he’d need; and let himself out.

The dashboard clock glowed 4:08 a.m. as Kevin drove under the I-10 viaduct and turned left onto the ramp, heading east. His alarm clock wouldn’t have gone off yet. Traffic was light, mostly pickups and old cars driven by shift workers or newspaper people or others with unusual work hours.

It was still pitch-dark. The tires made a pleasant hum. Being out this time of the morning was oddly peaceful. Others were asleep, and God could spend a moment or two with just Kevin before the rest of the world woke up.

The skyscrapers of downtown Houston rose on Kevin’s right. He looked at the skyline with both interest and trepidation, the sharp spires of corporate headquarters visible above the light fog that enveloped them. As he drove by the buildings, he tried to imagine working there—clad in coat and tie instead of musty blue coveralls, shuffling papers and writing memos instead of analyzing data and making chemicals. He wondered if he’d ever feel comfortable in the high canopy of the corporate jungle.

As he looked ahead, the I-610 bridge loomed in the distance, its lights arching up and over the Houston Ship Channel, where the mass of the country’s chemical plants and oil refineries stretched from east of the downtown center all the way to Texas City at the mouth of Galveston Bay—eighty miles of industry that made up a quarter of the refining and over a third of the chemical-production capacity of the United States.

Kevin exited I-10 and drove up the incline of the I-610 bridge. He began to see the lights of the industrial plants along either side of the channel. From the apex of the bridge, maybe five hundred feet above the water, the magnitude of what had been built there was inescapable. As far as his eyes could see, for miles and miles, millions of incandescent lights glowed from hundreds of different plants, each with thousands of pieces of equipment. Hundreds of thousands of vessels and endless miles of pipe snaked along the ship channel and off toward the horizon. It was a corridor of production that touched nearly every corner of modern society. The base products made along this stretch of water were used in everything from plastic bags to car bumpers, roofing material to housing insulation. And, of course, there were the refineries for gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil.

For Kevin, it was the magnitude, the sheer scope of this industrial corridor that had attracted him to be a part of an industry of which few people had any real concept, something that was bigger and more complex than anything imaginable. And, while others were appalled by the unabashed, bare functionality of the industrial skeletal structures, Kevin found it all energizing and reveled in its grandeur.

Descending the bridge, Kevin took the Highway 225 exit and headed east once again. His path took him along the edge of the plants, amid the acrid, sweet aromatic odors and translucent glows of the mercury vapor lights that shone through the rising plumes of steam. He’d be at the Battleground Road exit in no time. And from there it was only a few miles to the plant.

To Kevin it seemed that this day was like every other. How could he possibly know what was in store for him? How can any of us know?

Chapter 1

IT WAS A DANGEROUS JOB, and Ray Thibodeaux was a contract laborer. That’s why he got it. But none of that mattered to Ray. He’d been working in chemical plants since he was fifteen. Work was work. And you had to work to get paid, dangerous or not.

Ray stood in the blazing Houston heat near the base of the scaffolding that had been erected around the caustic wash vessel the day before. The rays of the sun reflected off the aluminum insulation covers of the surrounding pipe and vessels which only made it hotter. Ray’s two man work crew was standing on the scaffolding twelve feet up getting ready to remove the pressure-safety valve (PSV). Most companies only removed PSVs when the chemical product unit was down and emptied. Not Centennial Chemical though. Shutting down meant lost profits. Besides, the risks could be controlled. Management said so.

From ground level, Ray directed the activities of his workers. He had brought in a small crane to lift the 350 pound PSV. It was too heavy to try and man handle. Ray had spotted the crane a safe distance from the wash vessel, and so that it could extend its boom out and over the caustic wash vessel and the PSV.

Ray used hand signals to position the blocks at the end of the boom directly over the PSV. Hanging from the block was a hook and a reinforced wovern nylon strap that would be wrapped around the PSV. Currently, the strap held two plate-like discs, called blinds, that would be used to blank off the openings left behind when the PSV was lifted away.

The crane operator lowered the blinds slowly to the men waiting at the top of the scaffolding according to Ray’s signals.

Just a little lower. Dat’s it. Slow . . . easy does it! Ray said to himself. When the blinds reached the point where the contractors could reach them comfortably, Ray made a complete fist with his hand, indicating stop to the crane operator. It took a moment for the crane operator to react, and Ray snapped his head toward the man, glared, and yelled at him although he knew there was no way the man could hear him over the hum of the operating unit. Stop, ya damn fool. Can’t ya see da damn signal? The heat was getting to Ray.

The crane operator didn’t have to hear Ray to understand the message; Ray’s steely black eyes told him everything.

After staring the crane operator down for a few seconds to make his point, Ray looked up to the men on the scaffolding and then back to the crane operator as he raised his arm again. This time he held his index finger against his thumb and clapped them together like the jaws of a tiny dog barking. This told the crane operator to ease the load down ever so gently to the men on the scaffolding, a move that he did with care and attention this time. When the blinds finally lay flat on the plank boards atop the scaffolding, one of the contract workers held up his fist. Ray relayed the signal to the crane operator, who obeyed immediately.

As the men untied the blinds, Ray walked toward the base of the scaffolding and began giving them instructions, yelling as loud as he could to be heard over the idling diesel and the ever-present hum of the plant in the background.

Okay, boys. Let’s get dat strap freed up and hooked around dat PSV, Ray commanded, waving his arms as he always did when he was excited or nervous. Ray could feel the sun beating down hard on his back, and he could almost feel the sting of the piercing rays through the thin material of his coveralls. Beads of sweat had started to run down the backs of his legs.

The workers nodded and busied themselves with the task at hand. When it was clear that they had secured the strap around the PSV as instructed, Ray signaled the crane operator to extend the boom so it was directly above the PSV. When it came time to lift the PSV off the vessel, Ray wanted the boom centered. The last thing he needed was a three-hundred-fifty-pound hunk of steel swinging around pipes, vessel, and workers.

When the boom was positioned correctly, Ray motioned to have the blocks raised ever so slightly. He watched carefully, and just before the strap seized up taut, Ray snapped his head back toward the crane and once again clenched his fist. The signal was obeyed on command, and Ray could see the crane operator in the cab mouthing something back to him before taking both hands and wiping the sweat from his face. The cab of the crane had no air conditioning.

The sweat was now streaming down the backs of Ray’s legs, and he could feel his coveralls beginning to stick to his shoulders and arms. He knew that the men up on the scaffolding must be sweating, too, losing fluids, and he considered a short water break for them but decided against it. It was only going to get hotter, and the sooner they got started, the sooner they’d be done.

Ray snatched the radio microphone from the lapel of his coveralls, but before he thumbed the button, he paused. He had planned to call into the ethylene production unit control room and tell them he was about to pull the PSV, but decided against it. They’d have the PSV off, the blinds on, and the job done faster than greased pig shit. Them boys know we be out here, anyway, Ray thought. Dey just give us a permit not tirdy minutes ago.

Ray clipped the mic back onto his lapel, cupped his hand around his mouth, and yelled up to the men on the scaffolding, You be good to go. Get dem slicka suits and resp’ators on. And make damn sure dem seals be tight. Let’s get after this one and knock it in da head, 

Chapter 2

THE CONTROL ROOM WAS quiet. Harold Muddy Waters walked out of his office, down the hall, and into the coffee bar. The fog from his hangover had begun to lift, and he had even been able to defecate earlier. That always made him feel better. The first cup of coffee had worked as a laxative, and Mother Nature had done the rest. They might have to repaint the walls in the head, but Muddy didn’t care; in fact, he was almost proud of the stench he had left behind. It would sure be a surprise to the next one in there.

Grinning at the thought, Muddy filled his mug and placed the pot back on the burner. He doctored the coffee with powdered creamer and two packets of sugar before sipping the mixture for taste. It was a little too sweet, but that was okay. He knew from experience that the sugar would help him metabolize the alcohol, and that was just what he needed right about now.

He took another sip and felt the warmth of the fluid sliding down his esophagus, but when it reached his stomach, it seemed to erupt and burn like lava spewing out of a volcano. Damn reflux, he thought. He hadn’t had a bite of food since lunch the day before, and his empty stomach was protesting predictably. The evening before he’d gone straight from work to the local icehouse. He’d planned on just stopping for a couple, but, a couple had turned into a few, and a few had turned into many. And, before he knew it, it was after midnight and he was feeling no pain at all. Mission accomplished.

Still, he wished that he’d eaten something. He wished that Bonnie had fixed him breakfast, but that hadn’t happened for almost three years now,ever since their boys had moved out.She’d gotten lazy. Mudday had to admit that he’d gotten lazy too. He never used to stop off at the icehouse on the way home like he did now. Somewhere along the way they had lost something and although they both knew it deep down inside, neither of them wanted to admit it because saying it out loud might just make it real, and pretending was easier than facing the truth.

Muddy took one more big gulp of coffee to wash down the burn in his chest. It worked for the time being. Feeling only a little better, he walked back down the hall to the center of the control room where the computer consoles and board operators sat. He’d walked through earlier that morning but hadn’t stopped to talk. He’d really felt like hammered dog shit then, and he knew he could be a real tyrant when he felt that bad.

Muddy he stepped through the doorway and into a shadowy recess at the back of the room. Even though it was sunny and bright outside, the control room was always dimly lit. Control rooms were constructed to withstand explosions. In part that meant no windows—no glass to shatter. But it also meant there was no natural light. That was one of the trade-offs.

Rich Brooks and Ben Oaks, the two board operators, sat in their swivel chairs in front of the console screens. They did not outwardly acknowledge the fact that Muddy had entered their world, but they knew he was there. At six-foot-five and 269 pounds, Muddy was an imposing figure. And even if they hadn’t seen him, they still would have known he was there. It was part of their collective wolf pack consciousness. They could feel it when an alpha male was near.

Without saying a word, Muddy stepped to the center of the room behind the two operators and stood quietly, sipping his coffee, still working to wash down the burn and taking in the mood of the men. He walked over to the operating log, flipped the pages, and scanned the notes that the night shift had made. The grammar was poor and the spelling atrocious, but the meaning was there. He watched his round, cigar-like finger scan the pages, down one side and then the other, and remembered what his father had told him: Them hands are workin’ hands, son. You git yourself a job puttin’ them hands ta work, and they’ll take care of ya.

The night shift had recorded trouble with the acetyene converters, but that was no surprise. They’d been having trouble with the converter for days now. Muddy raised his head from the log book and let his eyes traverse the colored displays of the computer consoles. Everything seems normal. Then, just as Muddy was about to head back to his office, the voice of Rich Brooks pierced the melodic hum of the control room.

Hey, what the hell is going on here? I’m getting another pressure build in the converters, Rich announced to the room at large. He sat up at attention in his chair and focused on the screen in front of him while the fingers of his left hand rolled the trackball, racing the pointer across the screen.

Instinctively, Muddy took a step toward Rich and, forgetting about the fire in his gut, gripped his coffee cup tight. He was careful not to move too close, however. Rich was an experienced operator, and no one needed his boss hovering over him while he was trying to work a problem.

Muddy continued to watch from a distance as Rich scanned the screens, his head snapping back and forth as he gathered information from the multiple views in front of him. Suddenly the alarm sounded—a high-pitched beeping tone that repeated, four times per second. Rich’s eyes immediately caught the flashing red box around the pressure indicator on the schematic of the acetylene converters. The pressure had been rising ever since shift change, but it had just jumped dramatically, tripping the alarm.

Rich reached for the keyboard and acknowledge the alarm. As he did, the audio alarm fell silent, but the tiny red box next to the converters continued to blink red on the screen. Ben, who, like Rich, was sitting straight up in his chair now, scanned his own screens but periodically leaned over to catch a glimpse of Rich’s. Muddy held steady and watched as Rich and Ben rapidly scrolled through their sections of the unit and worked to analyze the problem. They were doing just what they were supposed to do --- exactly according to procedure.

Finally, Rich spoke again. Okay, guys. I think I’ve got another problem here. I’m gettin’ a level rise in the bottom of the ethylene splitter column. Rich’s voice was calm and sure, but inside the tension was growing: his neck muscles were beginning to knot. He scanned the mass of data displayed on each screen. He knew there was only so much data he could assimilate before it would overload his eyes and brain.

Ben looked at his own screens, toggled a key to open a valve another 5 percent, and then looked back at Rich. Have you checked the pressure drop on the converters? Ben asked. It was a calm but urgent plea. Not panicked. Not yet.

Yeah, I got it right here, Rich said, pointing with the cursor to the value on the screen. It’s movin’ up. It’s movin’ up, Rich announced, now jabbing his stubby finger at the display. Rich could feel the heavy weight of responsibility like a backpack on his back. He could feel the shoulder straps tightening as another granite rock was slipped into the backpack and clunked down upon the others. He could feel himself roll his shoulders forward to take the strain and avoid falling backward, and that was when the beads of perspiration began to form on his forehead. The unit was beginning to crash, and he wondered if they would be able to stop it. His stomach clenched almost convulsively, and for a second he thought he might just puke right there, all over the console display and the keyboard, but he didn’t. He held it together. Just get to the end of the shift, he told himself. But considering the circumstances, the end of the shift seemed like a lifetime away.

Muddy took another step forward. He was now just six feet behind Rich’s chair. What, a moment ago, had looked like a mild upset—a bobble in the system—was beginning to develop into something much more serious. Muddy squinted as he examined the data on the screens. There was nothing in his head now but the ethylene unit. No bills, no auto loans, no flames in his stomach, just the unit.

The alarms now went off, one after the other. As quickly as they were acknowledged and silenced, another one would trip, setting off the shrill beeping that only served to raise the tension in the room. Muddy watched as the pressures and temperatures throughout the unit began to swing wildly. Rich and Ben responded as they had been taught, but the unit was fighting hard against them. The computer control system made automatic adjustments back to preestablished set points, but the automatic controls couldn’t react quickly enough. They were tuned for steady-state operation in which only minor changes were needed. In the case of a process upset like this one, the computer controls inevitably overshot one way and then another.

The swings in temperature and pressure were beginning to ripple down through each section of the process unit like an accordion. More alarms began to trip, and the problems were beginning to mount, one upon another. Rich and Ben continued to make adjustments—steam flow, reflux,—but it wasn’t helping. New alarms kept going off.

Muddy knew they were losing the unit and there was little they could do to stop it. Rich and Ben worked valiantly, but there was too much for the two of them to handle. They’d followed all the proper procedures, but the swings in temperature, pressure and flow had propagated throughout the whole unit.

Watching the situation quickly deteriorate, Muddy suspected that the only way for them to get things back under control was to shut down the unit—shut the whole thing down, before it shut itself down, and start it back up from the beginning. The process of shutdown and restart would take most of a day and Muddy knew he’d get a ear full from the accountants downtown, but there was no other choice. Facts are fact and you just can’t ignore them.

Watching for a few seconds longer, Muddy tried to figure out a way to keep the unit from crashing, but couldn’t. It was coming down, and coming down fast. That meant venting to the flare. Millions of pounds of flammable gas would have to be vented out of the process equipment, through the flare header piping and burned in the flare tip five hundred feet in the air. There was no way to avoid it at this point.

That was the last thing that ran through Muddy’s head before he was struck with an icy-cold chill that ran up his spine. He remembered that Ray Thibodeaux and a small work crew were pulling a PSV out in the unit—a PSV that was connected to the flare header.

Chapter 3

RAY THIBODEAUX RAISED his left arm and prepared to give a signal to the crane operator. The workers on the scaffolding had unbolted the PSV from both flanges and were about to have it lifted off. In all, they had removed twenty-two bolts—twelve from the flange that secured the PSV to the top of the vessel, and an additional ten from the flange that connected the PSV to the flare header.

The men had secured the PSV to the strap and were waiting for the crane to lift it up and away. The strap strained taut; it was the only thing keeping the PSV from falling over.

Ray held his index finger in the air and turned it in a slow, circular motion. The man in the cab responded by revving the diesel engines and pulling a lever gently to begin the lift.

Ray watched the PSV and the men on the scaffolding. He glanced over his shoulder to make certain that the crane operator was still with him and paying attention. He was. When Ray looked back to the top of the scaffold, the PSV shuddered briefly as if it didn’t want to leave. It held tight to the position it had held for nearly four years, and then it finally let go and began to rise slowly off the vessel. The men stood beside it and guided the large hunk of metal with their hands, keeping it from swinging until it was out of reach. At Ray’s command, the crane operator stopped the lift when the PSV was clear of the vessel and the men. Ray then directed the crane operator to swing the boom and the PSV away from the scaffolding.

The men on the scaffolding watched the PSV moved away and then worked swiftly to cover the gaping holes left behind. Both men were dripping with sweat after spending nearly a half hour removing the bolts. The plastic slicker suits they wore for protection did not breathe and as a result, their core temperatures had risen quickly in the ninety-plus-degree summer heat. Making things worse, their faces and heads were covered by the black rubber of the full face respirators, and the sweat that poured off their foreheads, cheeks, and noses puddled inside at the bottom of their masks. When the sweat rose over the exhalation valve located just below their chins, it spewed out and onto the plank boards at their feet. From his position on the ground, Ray could see sweat spitting out of the masks with each labored breath. He knew his men were beginning to overheat.

Using the blind flange lifted earlier, the men covered the hole on top of the vessel so that they wouldn’t accidentally fall through. Hot chemical vapors rose from the vessel’s milky-white solution, a mixture of sodium hydroxide, benzene, toluene, and other aromatic hydrocarbons.

After covering the hole with the larger of the two round blinds, the men stabbed two bolts in holes at opposite edges to secure it for the time being. They would put the rest of the bolts in later. They knew the real danger was from the open-ended line to the flare header.

With no restrictions between the open-ended line and the main flare header, low pressure organic vapors streamed out into the atmosphere, surrounded the workmen, and made them glad they had tested their respirators. They would now know for sure if the seal between the mask and their face was good. They would also find out if the acid gas-organic vapor filter cartridges that cleaned the air before it was sucked in through their inhalation valves were working. It was a race against time. They needed to blind off the flare header, and they needed to do it before their filter cartridges became saturated and useless.

The men struggled with the heavy blind as they held it against the flange that hung at waist height. They tried to align the holes so that a bolt could be stabbed through, but they were fighting the weight of the flange and the pressure of flare gas. It was normal to have a little pressure on the flare header. Something was always going through it. And a pound or two of pressure was what they had expected. But when a couple of pounds of pressure is applied to an area the size of an eight-inch blind, it resulted in an overall force of over 150 pounds. That meant that the men not only had to hold the flange up vertically against the force of gravity, but also had to push horizontally against the force of the flare gas. After several tries, during which they were unable to overcome the force of the flare gas, the men started over again, only this time they held the blind below the flange and aligned a hole on the blind with a hole on the flange of the open-ended line. They then stabbed a bolt through the aligned holes and secured it with a nut on the back side. In this position, the blind did not cover the open-ended flare line but hung below it. With the single bolt and nut in place, the men could use the single bolt as a pivot point and swiveled the blind up and around into position.

Even with the single bolt in place, the men fumbled to get the other holes aligned as they fought against the pressure of the flare gas. They were quickly becoming exhausted. Every time they adjusted the blind into position and attempted to stab in a second stabilizing bolt, the force of the flare gas buffeted the blind flange out of position. Every small adjustment the men made was met by a larger reaction from the force of the flare gas. Sweating profusely, they had lost a critical amount of fluid and were beginning to show the first signs of heat exhaustion. Finally, one of the men stabbed a bolt through two aligned holes and the jostling of the blind was abruptly quieted. Spitting sweat out of their masks more frequently now, they paused for only a moment to catch their breath. One of the men pressed his hand against his mask-covered forehead in relief. Then, without having to say a word, they both began working feverishly again to secure the second bolt with a nut.

It was hard to manipulate the nut with the thick neoprene gloves, and the man with the nut cross-threaded it twice and had to back it off both times and start again. He wanted desperately to wipe the sweat from his eyes but knew that he couldn’t. The mask was his protection, but it was also an obstacle. His partner held the head of the bolt with a wrench and looked on with obvious and increasing frustration. The man trying to thread the nut could see his partner’s eyes through the glass face shield of the respirator, and he