HOUSTON -- Nine contract workers who say they were hurt during a fire at the Lyondell Chemical Refinery earlier this year are filing a lawsuit against the company.
The claims come two months after the May 17 fire at the refinery located in the 12000 block of Lawndale in southeast Houston.
It was determined that the fire started after an operator did not follow procedure.
“Honestly, I thought that was the last day I was going to live,” said Juan Andrade who is one of the nine named in the suit.
The 22-year-old insulator says he was standing 30 feet from where the fire started.
“Everybody started screaming and I looked up. [I saw] a big fire and smoke and I started running,” he said.
The single father of six says he ran into a scaffold and injured himself.
“When I ran into that scaffold, I kind of beat myself up. I fell. I ran into the scaffold and I hurt my leg [and] my shoulders,” said Andrade.
Andrade says the memories of that day have scarred him for life.
“I’ve been working in a refinery for four years, since I was 18, and I don’t think I have the confidence to work in the refinery,” he said.
The eight others named in the lawsuit are claiming similar injuries.
“A lot of these workers, all they do is refinery type work, many, many years of refinery type work,” said their attorney Vuk Vujasinovic. “So they’ve got to support families, minor children, doing this kind of work. A lot of these guys are hesitant to go back into that line of work.”
A spokesperson for the company said he does not know the basis of the allegations. He said this is the first they’ve heard about claims of injuries by Andrade or any of the other eight contractors.
“That individual works for a contract company and the expectation is that all injuries will be reported promptly to an individual supervisor,” said Lyondell spokesman David Harpole.
Andrade says he didn’t report the injuries because he feared he could be fired.
His attorney also responded to questions about why the injuries weren’t reported to the company.
“Well, the day it happened there was an emergency evacuation of all the workers at the plant, including all of our clients, and they were more concerned with workers’ safety and an impending explosion rather than filling out a form,” said Vujasinovic.
The nine men are asking for an unspecified amount of damages.
