Reader Comment: Criminal Malfeasance and CSB Investigations

A long-time reader and commentor here, Richard Rosera, pointed me at an article on the Progressive Farmer (dtnpf.com) on “Didion Milling Employees Found Guilty”. It discusses recent convictions of two managers at Didion Milling for charges of falsifying documents and conspiracy to obstruct and mislead OSHA investigators in their investigation of the 2017 deadly dust explosion at Didion Milling. An earlier article from the same source noted that two other supervisors pled guilty to falsification of cleaning logs in relation to the explosion.

That dust explosion is still under investigation by the Chemical Safety Board. This investigation is the oldest incident still on the backlog closure plan. Interestingly, it appears that none of the CSB investigators that actually worked on the investigation are still with the agency.

Presumably, the same false statements made to OSHA investigators were made to the CSB investigation team. Since the CSB is not a regulatory agency, false statements to CSB investigators are not legally as serious as identical false statements made to OSHA investigators. This would be the reason that there is no mention of the CSB in the article.

I suspect that this criminal investigation into Didion Milling is part of the reason for the delay in CSB’s issuing of an investigation report on the incident. If CSB had issued a report that provided technical information supporting the claim of failure to perform the required cleaning and the falsification of records, that information would likely have been used by the prosecution in the case. Such testimony would have a chilling effect on the open sharing of information with the CSB accident investigators in future incidents.