American

Danger is a constant companion of workers in the petrochemical industry. But no one could be prepared for the explosions and the fireball that last week reduced a Phillips Petroleum Co. plastics plant near Houston to a blackened maze. "It was like being inside a bomb," said purchasing agent Clay Howell, who was knocked out of his chair 350 yds. from the blasts. Trying to stop the inferno was "like spitting in the ocean," said Houston fireman Joseph Phillips. Twenty-two employees were either killed or presumed dead.

The company suggested that a seal on one of the plant's eleven-story-high reactors may have developed a leak, leading to the ignition of a stream of gas. But workers contended that the cloud was so dense that a valve must have been left open. In any case, the disaster dramatized the need for greater concern for safety by the chemical industry. Its lobbyists had persuaded the Bush Administration to remove tougher safety restrictions on such facilities from proposed legislation for renewing the Clean Air Act.