UPDATE: Just received this statement from refinery spokesman Brandon Matson. Story has been updated accordingly.
At approximately 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, the Martinez Refinery released coke dust for less than one minute. We subsequently notified appropriate government agencies and issued a Community Warning System Level 1 notification at 10:22 a.m. Additionally, refinery personnel conducted offsite monitoring, which included collecting samples, and continue to work cooperatively with the agencies.
MRC is investigating the root cause of the incident as well as the delay in initial notification. We are committed to ensuring we make timely CWS notifications.
Any resident or business that has a claim or concern related to this incident, or would like to speak with a company representative, may call our claims line at 800-542-7113, provide the following information, and a representative will return the call:
Thanks. It definitely was a struggle to pull this together so quickly and I hope I was fair and accurate (I do this in my spare time from my day job).
I really thought it was important to provide context on what we do or don't know at this point and make clear that all refinery accidents and emergency alerts aren't created equal. As a lifelong journalist, it really saddens me to see how the Bay Area media are taking advantage of our misfortunes and concerns to produce content that appears more designed to alarm and cause panic (in order to generate website clicks and profits) rather than provide context and acknowledge the danger in jumping to conclusions before all the facts are known. The Chronicle article was the latest in a long string of such articles dating to the hysteria over the soil.
Those of us who have been around refineries our whole lives understand the need to hold them accountable, but we also know the reality that they engage in dangerous, dirty operations and sometimes things are just going to happen because there's no way to make them perfect. They actually happen a lot less often than they once did, but every accident that can be prevented, should be. At the same time, creating a mountain out of every single refinery mishap before the facts are clear is not going to serve anyone's best interests in the end.
I applaud your dedication to this big bag of problems. At a fork in the road, the City of Martinez decided to have a better warning system and the BOS decided not to, and their decision needs an overdue upgrade.
Thank you, Kathy. I've been impressed by the initiative the city has taken to create its own system given the clear shortcomings of the CWS system. While the county has focused solely on MRC's failure to notify them about the Thanksgiving night accident, the mayor and others have rightly pointed out that even had MRC done its job and activated the Community Warning System, the county's notification protocols would have been woefully inadequate to get the word out to the community, and many residents still would have been in the dark. That's something CC Health has gone out of its way to avoid acknowledging and discussing during all of this, though they did decide to change their notification policy for Level 2 incidents as a result. But as we saw yesterday, residents are still largely in the dark for Level 1 incidents, which this new Martinez Alerts tool will address.
I appreciate your investigative journalism on these refinery accidents. I just keep wondering which public official / agency is caving to MRC's stipulations.
I'm so grateful to you for keeping us updated on all of these events and doing such thorough follow-up with county officials. We live in downtown Martinez and the first we heard of the incident yesterday was by seeing the article in the SF Chronicle. The lack of interest in improving and updating procedures at the county level is disappointing.
UPDATE: Just received this statement from refinery spokesman Brandon Matson. Story has been updated accordingly.
At approximately 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, the Martinez Refinery released coke dust for less than one minute. We subsequently notified appropriate government agencies and issued a Community Warning System Level 1 notification at 10:22 a.m. Additionally, refinery personnel conducted offsite monitoring, which included collecting samples, and continue to work cooperatively with the agencies.
MRC is investigating the root cause of the incident as well as the delay in initial notification. We are committed to ensuring we make timely CWS notifications.
Any resident or business that has a claim or concern related to this incident, or would like to speak with a company representative, may call our claims line at 800-542-7113, provide the following information, and a representative will return the call:
Full Name
Complete Address
Telephone Number
Email address
Thanks. It definitely was a struggle to pull this together so quickly and I hope I was fair and accurate (I do this in my spare time from my day job).
I really thought it was important to provide context on what we do or don't know at this point and make clear that all refinery accidents and emergency alerts aren't created equal. As a lifelong journalist, it really saddens me to see how the Bay Area media are taking advantage of our misfortunes and concerns to produce content that appears more designed to alarm and cause panic (in order to generate website clicks and profits) rather than provide context and acknowledge the danger in jumping to conclusions before all the facts are known. The Chronicle article was the latest in a long string of such articles dating to the hysteria over the soil.
Those of us who have been around refineries our whole lives understand the need to hold them accountable, but we also know the reality that they engage in dangerous, dirty operations and sometimes things are just going to happen because there's no way to make them perfect. They actually happen a lot less often than they once did, but every accident that can be prevented, should be. At the same time, creating a mountain out of every single refinery mishap before the facts are clear is not going to serve anyone's best interests in the end.
I applaud your dedication to this big bag of problems. At a fork in the road, the City of Martinez decided to have a better warning system and the BOS decided not to, and their decision needs an overdue upgrade.
Thank you, Kathy. I've been impressed by the initiative the city has taken to create its own system given the clear shortcomings of the CWS system. While the county has focused solely on MRC's failure to notify them about the Thanksgiving night accident, the mayor and others have rightly pointed out that even had MRC done its job and activated the Community Warning System, the county's notification protocols would have been woefully inadequate to get the word out to the community, and many residents still would have been in the dark. That's something CC Health has gone out of its way to avoid acknowledging and discussing during all of this, though they did decide to change their notification policy for Level 2 incidents as a result. But as we saw yesterday, residents are still largely in the dark for Level 1 incidents, which this new Martinez Alerts tool will address.
I appreciate your investigative journalism on these refinery accidents. I just keep wondering which public official / agency is caving to MRC's stipulations.
I'm so grateful to you for keeping us updated on all of these events and doing such thorough follow-up with county officials. We live in downtown Martinez and the first we heard of the incident yesterday was by seeing the article in the SF Chronicle. The lack of interest in improving and updating procedures at the county level is disappointing.