In the night from October 2 to 3, 2025, the Chevron Raffinery in El Segundo exploded on fire, which illuminated the sky over South Bay. The residents described the explosion as a “mini request”; A lively red glow bathed the horizon; And the cloud of smoke was seen for miles.
Although Chevron claims that there were no deaths, at least one worker was injured. The fire is now under regulatory and internal examination, whereby Chevron promises to submit a complete failure analysis within 30 days.
However, this is far from an isolated accident. The fire is the highlight of years of negligence, characterized by inadequate supervision and an initial violation of violations that Chevron is likely to build in a long time.
In the past five years, the establishment of El Segundo 46 has received references to violations from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), 13 of which were 13 of them last year. Frequent violations include chemical leaks, faulty or degraded devices, non -stop or repair of instruments and exceeding permissible emission limits.
On the side of work and workplace security, the federal government's Osha inspections have emerged 17 violations in the refinery in the past decade. Among them: failure to maintain guidelines and the safety of the conductors, poor risk analyzes (especially for chemical leaks and explosion risk) and inattentiveness on protocols for the prevention of heat, all basic requirements in a location handling with volatile hydrocarbons. In 2022, the Osha published a “serious” quote that was bound to the failure of the refinery to maintain safe practices that could possibly have prevented dangerous releases.
In addition to internal violations, the broader ecological footprint of the facility is large. Chevron El Segundo described a 2023 environmental analysis as the worst among about 80 US refineries for his unloading of nitrogen and selenium in surrounding waters (especially Santa Monica Bay). These pollutants represent chronic dangers: endocrine disorders, carcinogenic risk, damage to marine ecosystems and cumulative stress loads in adjacent communities.
On site, the residents have long complained about sulfuric smells, nausea, headache, eye and throat irritation – symptoms that are common in the vicinity of refineries and chemical plants. The city of El Segundo maintains a portal “odor / environmental problems”, in which calls are regularly presented by neighbors, which claim that the surveillance systems examine the real exposure.
The Ministry of Public Health of Los Angeles County admits that these episodic smells do not seem to be high enough for long -term damage, while they are currently not high enough that these episodic smells can cause short -term symptoms.
This convergence of environmental and security errors shows that the October fire was the manifestation of a system that enables the oil and gas industry to oppose the accountability obligation.
Deregulation, cross -party attacks, hypocritical “green” politics
In the past few decades, both parties have contributed to the destruction of the supervision of the federal and country. This includes the strip of funds, the powers of the thigh agency's enforcement powers and rolling back on security standards.
The continuous closure of the Trump management is used to reduce social programs, including workplace and environmental safety. Agencies such as the Osha, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) were effectively suspended with large parts of the federal government, so that critical supervisory functions were not financed and not impressed. Inspections are encouraged, enforced measures are given up and long -term examinations are set up.
The agencies responsible for preventing chemical disasters and deaths in the workplace are starved into irrelevance. The cynical attitude of both parties (Republicans lowered the budgets, democrats, the empty “green” slogans while voting for austerity measures) created a system in which the institutions that were commissioned to protect human life were reduced to hollow bowls.
California has long been kept as a model of progressive regulation, but this is a fraud image. Among the consecutive democratic administrations, the state has referred to climate ambitions and pollution controls and at the same time the supervisory authorities of the resources are hungry that is necessary for enforcement.
Cal/Osha, the security authority at the workplace of the state, is chronically underfunded, understaffed and incapable of fulfilling his basic mandate himself: inspecting jobs, enforcing rules and protecting employees in need of protection. This was exposed by a recently carried out state examination, in which the state of the agency was presented in deep decay and functional disorders.
In his review of only 60 case files between 2019 and 2024, the state examiner found at least 15 cases of serious injuries and accidents in which Cal/Osha did not even carry out an on-site inspection.
In practice, inspections are rare, endangered symptoms are not stacked by defendants and punishments (if they raised) are puny compared to corporate gains.
California air quality agencies such as SCAQMD are also restricted by limited budgets and political interference. Despite the occurrence of violations of violations, their ability to force correction measures or to impose meaningful fines is severely limited. Corporate giants such as Chevron can exploit law and administrative delays, appeal procedures and lax enforcement in order to draw compliance with an indefinite period.
The performative “green” agenda of the democratic party with cap-and trade markets, subsidies for corn-ethanol or mandates with electric vehicles masked the fact that in reality the regulation that fossil capital was hollowed out from the inside.
Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB 237 and granted Kern County Authority up to 2,000 new oil bores to the rubber stamp every year until 2036. In the language of “fuel stability” and “consumer protection”, legislation is intended to enjoy the interests of company energy under the guise of environmental pragmatism.
The working class pays the costs
In the calculation of capital, human life, public health and the environment are unnecessary. The working class, especially low -income quarters, is the victim area.
The conditions in El Segundo are replicated nationwide in countless industrial corridors:
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along Louisiana's “Krebsgasse” with some of the highest cancer rates in the USA due to the dense concentration of petrochemical plants;
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in Houston's ship's channel, where refineries and chemical complex benzene, formaldehyde and other carcinogenic spend in the surrounding districts of the working class;
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in East -Chicago, Indiana, where the residents still live in the middle of lead and arsenic contamination through decades of industrial eponyms;
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In Richmond, California, where Chevron has repeatedly released poisonous smoke and wing gases over densely populated communities.
Epidemiological studies in the United States have shown the residents who live within 5 to 10 miles of refineries (further to those), higher rates of the lung, bladder, breast, colon and lymphatic cancer. Such patterns indicate the plausibility that decades of emissions on a low level, episodic torches, VOC publications and odor events contribute to cumulative health pollution.
Now, with this fire, the danger is acute. Toxic feathers, including fleeting organic compounds (VOCs), sulfur compounds, particles, are spreading over the neighborhoods. However, since the surveillance is partially and the reporting is delayed, the exact exposure channels remain cloudy. Chevron meets the PR insurance again; The supervisory authorities issue superficial statements; And the community remains the risk.
This disaster underlines the urgent need to revive the regulatory authority as an instrument of capitalist consent, but as an instrument of power of employees and community defense. Such tragedies can only be prevented by the independent mobilization of the working class, which demanded direct control, transparent enforcement, examinations and systemic transformations.
Time is more than mature to build up a movement that requires social ownership of energy, environmental protection and unreserved power for employees and communities to rule the industries that threaten their lives.