The agreement calls for safety improvements at the refinery while allowing the company to avoid being cited as a "willful" violator of safety regulations. Equilon agreed to what L&I officials described as the largest worker-safety settlement in state history.

The major pieces of the agreement included a $1.1 million fine to be paid to the state for worker-safety violations; a $1 million donation to a Fallen Worker Scholarship Fund, established on behalf of Equilon employees' families; and a $1 million contribution for the creation of a Workplace Safety and Health Institute at a state educational institution.

The $1.1 million penalty is the largest ever levied as a result of a worker-safety investigation in Washington, according to L&I. Under the settlement, Equilon, a joint operation of Shell and Texaco, also agreed to pay at least $350,000 for an independent, refinerywide safety audit, and to give the city of Anacortes $350,000 to buy a new fire engine.

According to press reports, L&I Director Gary Moore said the settlement, under which Equilon agreed not to appeal any of the fines or payments, was an innovative way to improve safety at the refinery and avoid a lengthy legal battle. He is quoted as saying "There is nothing we can say or do today that will make up for these needlessly lost lives. But we believe this agreement is the best result for the workers who remain at the refinery."

No classification and specific payment terms

In the unprecedented agreement, L&I agreed not to classify the two violations issued to the refinery yesterday as "willful" - the most serious classification under state law. Instead, the violations are referred to as "unclassified" - a designation suggested by Equilon attorneys who negotiated the settlement, accoding to press reports. If the violations issued yesterday had been classified as willful, the maximum penalty for each violation would have been only $70,000, L&I officials said. According to Equilon officials, the language surrounding willful violations would have implied negligence on the part of the company that "was not appropriate based on the facts of the accident."

According to the two violations issued in May 1999, Equilon failed to abide by regulations requiring employers to keep workplaces "free from recognized hazards," which are "likely to cause serious injury or death." The company failed to ensure workers were properly trained and that there were adequate safety procedures in place at the Coker unit to deal with the unusual circumstances after a November power outage, according to the L&I violation notice. In addition, the company did not adequately implement safety recommendations at the Coker unit dating back to a 1996 inspection, according to the violation.

'The workers union was generally pleased with the settlement, which also will pay for a full-time union employee to oversee safety procedures at the refinery, according to Tom Lind, international representative for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union, 8-591.

In a separate settlement agreement, Western Plant Services, the contractor that employed four of the workers killed in the November explosion, agreed to pay a $2,800 fine for inadequate worker training.

Some basic Facts on the incident

While confirming the basic details of Equilon's December report on the cause of the refinery explosion, L&I's six-month investigation faulted the company for its safety procedures at the refinery Coker, where oil is heated to more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit in two six-story steel drums to extract useable fuels such as gasoline and propane. The process leaves behind a charcoal-like residue called petroleum coke, which is sold to aluminum smelters as fuel.

L&I's report notes that the events leading up to the Nov. 25 accident at the delayed-coking unit started two days earlier, when a windstorm knocked out power to the refinery, forcing a total plant shutdown.

Although power was restored in two hours, the refinery's ability to produce steam - a crucial part of the delayed-coking process - was not restored until 10 hours later. The lack of power and steam allowed oil to harden into a crust inside one of the Coker's giant steel drums. Trapped inside the crust were volatile fuels that were not detected by refinery operators. Instead of injecting water into the Coker drum to cool the material down so it could safely be opened, Equilon "decided on a major change, leaving the drum to cool by air for 37 hours," according to the investigation summary.

L&I investigators concluded it would have taken 236 days for the material inside the drum to cool down enough for safe removal of the material inside. When the workers removed the bottom head of the drum to extract the coke, here is what happened, according to the L&I investigation: "They encountered a pocket of hot liquid fuel that broke through a crust of cooled material, rapidly pouring from the drum and explosively igniting into flames as it was exposed to air. "The flaming mass engulfed the two workers operating the controls and spewed off the second level of the unit, engulfing the four men below."

Before restarting the Coker in March, Equilon installed a new $575,000 remote-control system at the Coker unit that allows workers to unhead the steel Coker drums from a safe distance. The company also installed a $30,000 natural-gas backup system for purging the unit. Those were among the safety improvements L&I had sought in the settlement.

CSB Still investigating

The Chemical Safety and Investigation Board responded immediately to the fire but is still preparing its final report.