"for what was reported as an explosion....."

When an incident occurs that requires outside assistance from emergency management services typically results with news media covering the story. Companies then are faced with two options: they respond to news media questions, or they do not. Here is a recent incident where to our knowledge the company has refused all media inquires.

Two people were injured in an industrial incident one afternoon during the week of December 11, 2020 at aluminium company in the USA.

Emergency responders were called at 2:23 p.m. for what was reported as an explosion.

Local firefighters arrived on the scene and did not see smoke or flames and cannot confirm if an explosion occurred.

According to fire officials, one person was airlifted over 100 kilometers to a hospital and another injured person drove himself to a local hospital emergency room, local fire Chief said.

Plant employees assisted the man who was air lifted.

No other information has been released at this time.

We pray that the injured workers recover fully from their injuries. We do not know what injuries the workers suffered. We assume that one worker injuries were of a severity (e.g., burns) that local hospitals were not able to assist therefore a helicopter was needed to transfer the patient to a hospital with a level of trauma that could care for the worker.

When companies fail to provide information to news media after an incident, they are allowing the news media to make assumptions. Almost everytime the news media makes an assumption it is incorrect. Regarding this incident, one news media article stated that the explosion was related to molten metal. From our plant contacts we were able to find out that was incorrect. Regardless, because the aluminium company has not refuted or clarified the news media those statements become fact. We have seen this happen over and over again. Companies fail to comment for either or both of the following reasons: fear of litigation, or fear of bad publicity. Litigation after an incident is going to happen no matter what. While fear of bad publicity occurs and can grow when the company fails to comment. The bad publicity affects company in a myriad of reasons. From being denied government permits and approval to expand to difficulty recruiting new workers who fear that the company is “dangerous”. It happens all of the time. We are also amazed at how companies fail to comment on social media. We acknowledge it is a fine line between refuting and defending. But, some of the comments on social media amaze us after an incident.

On a different topic: Do companies have a responsibility to tell other companies if an unique or unusual incident occurs? Yes or No? Before you answer let’s think about the following situation:

An aluminium company suffers a fatal incident. It is an unusual incident, something that has not happened before, nor was considered a hazard, and the machinery/equipment/procedure is present in many other plants. The company decides not to acknowledge the fatality publicly. Soon thereafter at an industry safety conference, the company employees in attendance do not talk about the incident. We assume they were instructed not to. Then in the future a similar incident occurs at another company. The second company was unaware of the danger till their fatal incident occurred.

The situation has happened before. We were initially angry with the company because we know all to well the incidents can reoccur. But, overtime we felt compassion for the aluminum company workers who were at the safety conference. We cannot imagine their feelings inside knowing how they would want to tell everyone in attendance what tragedy had befallen their company. But, they couldn’t. Now imagine that these workers (who we assume were told not to talk about the tragedy) find out about a similar incident. They are seasoned smart professionals who know that in some small way, they are personally responsible for the second incident because they did not speak up at the safety conference. You may not blame them, nor do we blame them, but we bet they blame themselves. It is only human.

To counter this we have taken the tact with aluminium companies who fail to publicly acknowledge incidents is to meet with their executives. When this topic arises we provide examples of companies who do publicly acknowledge incidents. There are numerous companies who do, and for fear of leaving one or more out of the list we have chosen not to name the companies who are transparent in terms of their corporate safety.

We tell company executives the following story. We were meeting with one aluminium company who recently had a contractor fatality at one of its plants. We asked the CEO why they posted the incident on their corporate webpage, on the front page, and let it stay at the top for 6 weeks. We added, that we are asking because no one does that. The CEO looked at us and said “we did because we failed that worker and his family.” We have told other companies this story. Not to demean or insult the CEO and the aluminium company, but to challenge our audience to do what is morally right. We acknowledge the difficulty that it presents, but we counter if you want to be a leader in our industry. It sometimes entails doing what it is difficult. We end by telling the executive(s) we believe in them. We do.

The Aluminium Times Magazine had an article on this topic. The article can be downloaded here.

Please comment.