1 dead, 3 missing in blast, fire at Washington oil refinery

1 dead, 3 missing in blast, fire at Wash. refinery

ANACORTES, Wash. — An explosion and fire at an oil refinery shook homes and shot flames into the night sky early Friday, killing one person, leaving three workers missing and critically injuring four others.

The fire struck the Tesoro Corp. refinery in Anacortes, north of Seattle, at about 12:30 a.m., the company said in a statement. The blaze occurred at the naphtha unit while maintenance work was being performed and was extinguished in about 90 minutes, the company said.

There was one confirmed fatality, four employees were hospitalized and three employees were unaccounted for, the company said.

Nearby residents, some five miles from the complex, called Washington TV stations after midnight with reports of an explosion, saying flames were being blown by high winds.

“My house shook, big time,” Lisa Wooding told KOMO-TV. “There were flames. First high, then low to the ground and broad.”

The four injured workers were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. A nursing supervisor who declined to give her name said all four were in critical condition.

Tesoro human resources manager John McDarment told The Associated Press he didn’t know exactly how the fire started.

Activity around the complex had calmed down considerably as dawn approached. Guards were turning reporters away from the gate and there was no apparent sign of the fire that had lit up the skies only hours earlier.

San Antonio-based Tesoro Corp. is an independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products. The Anacortes refinery, located about 70 miles north of Seattle on Puget Sound, can refine about 120,000 barrels of crude daily, primarily into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel to markets in Washington and Oregon, according to the company.