Refinery has a history of safety citations

Amid government shutdown, it's unclear if a federal inquiry into fire will occur.

- TONY BRISCOE AND CONNOR SHEETS

CREWS WORK to extinguish a large fire at the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo on Thursday night.

The explosion and hours-long fire at Chevron's refinery Thursday night in El Segundo deeply unnerved communities in the South Bay.

The blast sent shock waves throughout the refinery grounds, reportedly injuring at least one worker and jolting residents as far as a mile away. A 100-foot-tall pillar of fire cast an orange glow over the night sky. And towering plumes of smoke and acrid odors drifted eastward with the onshore winds.

While local regulators are investigating the fire, environmental advocates lament that federal safety agencies probably won't be joining in the effort to find the cause of Thursday’s explosion — perhaps preventing similar hazardous chemical releases in the future. The incident was one of the most perilous events in the refinery’s 114-year history, adding to a long list of environmental and safety violations, according to public records reviewed by The Times.

Most of the staff at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency tasked with investigating workplace safety, is not working because of the ongoing federal shutdown. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Mitigation Board, which determines root causes from dangerous chemical releases, is also furloughed and could lose its funding because of proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration.