After an oilfield tank battery explosion killed a 14-year-old girl, Louisiana regulators have put new rules in place for the storage tanks and are launching a campaign to identify all of them statewide.
Oilfield tank batteries are storage sites for oil wells that aren't connected to major pipelines. The large metal tanks can hold hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil and can give off flammable fumes.
But Zalee Gail Day-Smith and her friends were apparently unaware of those dangers, because they frequently hung out in and around one of the tanks near her mom's house in the Ragley community, between DeRidder and Lake Charles, Louisiana.
State Police investigators said they believe Day-Smith was sitting on the tank when it exploded on 28 February, killing her. She had dreamed of going to Harvard University and becoming a lawyer and judge, her father said.
The state Department of Natural Resources mentioned Day-Smith's death when they announced new safety rules for the tank batteries.
"We may never know exactly what happened on that site when Zalee died, and accidents of that kind may be rare, but we have to do what we can to minimize the chances of it ever happening again by doing more to make people aware of potential hazards and keep them off these sites if they don’t belong there," Commissioner of Conservation Richard Ieyoub said in a statement.
The rules require operators to build fences at least 4 ft high around the sites, with a gate that is locked whenever they are unmanned. They also require all tank hatches to be securely sealed, except for those that are part of a pressure relief system. And they require signs noting the hazards the tanks pose.