When Your Neighborhood Goes Boom

Dan Glick, co-founder of The Story Group, is the co-author of a new article in the latest edition of High Country News looking at an oil and gas explosion that happened December 22, 2017 at a 19 well site operated by Extraction Oil and Gas in Weld County. The fire was reported as a fire that was quickly contained and while one worker was injured, not much media attention was paid to the event.

Photo Credit: Ted Wood/The Story Group: Karley Robinson, heard the explosion at the well site on December 22, 2017.

When Your Neighborhood Goes Boom KGNU News

Glick and co-author Jason Plautz looked into the incident in much more detail and listened to the dispatch tapes from the event, spoke to workers who were present and got OSHA reports. They were able to piece together a series of events and realized how close it came to being a major explosion.” Even the fire-chief at the time told us that it was very, very lucky that many more people weren’t hurt.”

Glick says that these type of explosions and fires happen all the time, but having dug into the background of this particular fire, they were able to see how state regulatory agencies are failing to investigate them. “What happened in Windsor is happening all over the place and we’re not hearing about it very often.”