The human factor

They look real complicated, these petrochemical behemoths that rise from the Gulf Coast Plains, all the tubing and vessels and huffin' and puffin' and such as that. And sparkly at night, too.

And then they go haywire by the simplest of means.

Some goober doesn't close a valve.

A bunch of ethylene leaks out. People run around saying, "Holy shit!"

They bring in the engineers, the guys in the clean, Sta-Press, short-sleeve white shirts who use a formula "based upon an orifice flow calculation using a worst-case scenario" and declare that about 5,000 pounds of ethylene are, poof, agoner.

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