As I watched the spectacle on nationwide TV and web news, it brought me back to the time when a minor
bus accident occurred in San Francisco.
The bus with no more than 15 passengers on it had a minor collision with a
car. As the passengers exited the
disabled bus, they mingled with pedestrians on the sidewalk. Pretty soon ambulances were dispatched to the
scene and over 40 bus “passengers” were taken to local hospitals with assorted
neck and back pains.
To be sure, each one of those “passengers” received some
sort of settlement from the taxpayers of San
Francisco, along with their lawyers.
The Northern California oil refinery at Richmond California
has been in its present location for more than 100 years. Perched next to the San Francisco Bay,
it is in an excellent location to receive crude oil from ocean tankers where it
can refine the oil into different blends of fuels to be used by consumers. It is the largest refinery of its kind in
this part of California
and serves the needs of millions of cars, trucks and airplanes
When the refinery was first built, it was in an isolated, rural location. But over the past
hundred years San Francisco’s
urban sprawl has spread its tentacles around the facility.
But this is just like the story of airports that get built on
the outskirts of town eventually getting encased in urban sprawl. When the occasional accident happens, there
are calls for more stringent rules, the inevitable call for the airport to
be shut down, or moved and the prolific lawsuits filed.
But there hasn’t been a new oil refinery built in the United States
for the past 30 years. Environmental
lawsuits, not in my back yard mentalities and a PR campaign by the far left to
demonize fossil fuels have made it extremely difficult to build new ones. So America has been at the mercy of
fewer refineries to fulfill its growing energy needs and at the mercy of what a lack of competition does for price at the pump.
The entitlement mentality refuses to acknowledge self responsibility;
it is a victim mentality looking for a cause and is aided and abetted by those
who feed off of it.
Since air testing showed levels to be healthy in 8 different
samples, it is hard to fathom what sort of claims will be made. There was a
shelter in place warning sent out to the community immediately when the fire
first started. Perhaps some folks in the community lost work hrs. due to
that. No structures outside of the
refinery were burned, or damaged, except with the exception of some soot that will
have to be cleaned off. So what possible
claims will these pods of lawyers be able to conjure up?
The oil refinery is certainly a fat, juicy, target. The left would love to see it shut down and trial lawyers would love to get a
piece of it. But it is a major employer
in the community and the economy of the whole west coast relies on its
products.
What is a sure bet though, is hundreds, perhaps thousands of lawsuits will be
filed against the refinery and this will cost the company millions in lawyer
fees to defend, not to mention the costs if they lose or settle out of court.
No matter what the eventual costs of this fire, the loser in this legal debacle will be the end consumer who pays
for fuel in his gas tank, or buys products in the store that uses trucks to
transport those goods.
To a normal person who looks at this from a purely logical
point of view…Let the lawsuits emanate from those who were living in the area
prior to the construction of the oil refinery.
They truly are the ones who wouldn't know there was going to be an oil refinery in the neighborhood they were living in.
There is no reason to be living near an oil refinery to not know they smell and have an occasional fire from time to time. That is a fact, if you don't like it, move.
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