Friends and family members, along with hundreds of other local residents, mourned the 7 employees who were taken in the prime of their lives. The last survivor of the blast, Matt Gumbel, of Oak Harbor, died early Saturday morning, two weeks after the incident. The explosion also claimed the lives of Lew Janz, 41, of Anacortes; Daniel J. Aldridge, 50, of Anacortes; Matthew C. Bowen, 31, of Arlington; Darrin J. Hoines, 43, of Ferndale; Kathryn Powell, 29, of Burlington; and Donna Van Dreumel, 36, of Oak Harbor.
The explosion occurred as employees were restarting a unit that had recently undergone maintenance. The naphtha unit processes highly fammable liquied derived during the refining process. The exact cause is still under unknown, but federal investigators have indicated that workers were engulfed in "a fireball" that ignited within seconds. Gumbel, the last survivor, managed to crawl to a control room.