Good Hope Louisiana

Date 09-19-2013 02:34

I didn't want to hijack a previous thread so I thought I'd offer my sincere condolences to any fellow welders working with me at that plant except that we are still all alive, Hallelujah! I remember so many things about that job that haunt me today. There was a pile of hard hats outside the draggin' up gate. I remember being asked to do 'Special Projects'. We would, at night, climb to the upper section of the cat cracker and weld stainless stick rod, end to end, dress up in a flame resistant suit, and reach out to weld cherry red cracks in the operational cat cracker. I was qualified because I was great at welding and I was crazy enough to do it.

By jpill

Date 09-23-2013 14:00

I used to work for a rotating equipment repair shop that rebuilt some of the equipment out of that plant. Lets just say other companies did preventive maintenance and could predict when a shutdown was needed to replace a gearbox or pump. That plant waited till it all came to a screeching halt, wrecked the gearing, toasted the bearings, and tore up something else down stream. Every unit from them we rebuilt always had every inch of paint scorched off of the housings, and usually required a major overhaul.

By Stringer (***)

Date 09-25-2013 01:43

On one occasion I joined the crowd running full tilt out the gate and over the levee as the plant started to hum and spew coke or something. A lot of us were claiming 99 dependents to extract every dollar we could per given paycheck because we never saw the plant as sustainable fun.

By ZCat

Date 09-28-2013 15:11 Edited 09-28-2013 15:15

Hey! I was on the Special Projects crew, too! I was on night shift along with my brother. I worked on that cracker trying to box off the cracks while catalyst was spewing out at 1300 degrees, what a joke and a nightmare that deal was.
Sent you a PM, Stringer.

By Superflux (****)

Date 09-28-2013 17:44

The story is, that Jack Stanley bought all the major pieces of equipment by the ton at scrap prices and had all the vessels, towers, etc shipped in and reassembled them.