January 30th, 2007-the date of the horrible, propane-fueled explosion that destroyed Little General Store gas station and convenience store in Ghent, West Virginia. This tragic event was the outcome of a routine gas exchange gone horribly wrong, claiming the lives of four people and injuring six others. The incident’s origins lie in 1994, when a 500-gallon propane gas tank was installed against the back outer wall of the building by the Southern Sun gas company (later purchased and changed to Ferrellgas in 1996) in order to power a pizza oven inside the convenience store. In 2007, the Little General company switched its gas provider to ThompsonGas and a new tank was scheduled to be installed on the date of January 30th. That morning, two technicians arrived, ready to install the tank as planned; however, they quickly discovered that …show more content…
about 350 gallons of propane remained in the old tank. The lead technician left for another jobsite after the new tank was installed, leaving behind an inexperienced junior technician to complete the task of transferring the remaining gas to the new tank. The junior tech, unable to recognize the stream of propane leaking from the small hole on the tank’s safety plug, completely removed the plug, unleashing a highly-noticeable stream of propane from the tank. Due to the tank’s location, the stream hit the eaves of the building, entering through the overhanging attic vents and quickly filling the convenience store. The four employees inside took notice of the invisible gas almost immediately, identifying it by its distinct scent, but remained inside after posting up a sign reading, “Store closed due to gas leak.” After calling the lead technician to report the error, the junior tech called 911 to report the gas leak, neglecting to inform the employees to evacuate. It wasn’t until after the two members of the Ghent Volunteer Fire Department and two emergency medical technicians arrived on the scene that the question of the building’s vacancy was brought up, and by then it was too late. Just seconds after the volunteer fire captain asked the other firefighter to “Make sure everybody’s out, okay?” the tank exploded, injuring the four employees inside along with two others, while debris struck and fatally injured the fire captain, two gas technicians, and one of the emergency medical technicians. In light of this, we must ask ourselves-who was at fault for this horrific explosion that resulted in such unnecessary loss of life? Let’s begin with the obvious culprits. Firstly we have the lead technician, whose job was to supervise the junior technician and ensure the job was completed without accident or injury. He made the decision that, rather than see the job through to the end as he was supposed to, he would leave a junior technician (whom had neither formal training, nor any experience aside from the month-and-a-half he had been working for the company) behind to complete the job on his own, and then neglected to inform the junior technician to evacuate the area. Secondly we have the ThompsonGas company itself, who neglected to train the junior technician, and whom assigned that untrained junior technician to a potentially high-risk job. But then we have the not-so-obvious culprits, such as the Southern Sun/Ferrellgas company. If you think back you’ll remember that the old tank was installed against the outer back wall of the convenience store, going against the OSHA regulations and the Virginia state fire code, which both state that 500-gallon gas tanks must be placed ten feet away from buildings. Also partially responsible are the emergency responders. What did they do to be responsible for the explosion, you ask? That’s exactly the point. They didn’t respond in a timely manner, waiting almost 30 minutes to attempt to ensure that everyone had been evacuated from the building, and by then it was far too late. So, while they were not responsible for the explosion itself, they can be held accountable for the injury of the four employees inside. Furthermore, the responses of those responsible came too-little-too-late, especially on the part of the emergency responders. The gas leak was estimated to have begun at 10:25 a.m., 911 having been called soon after, with the emergency responders arriving not much later. After their arrival they seemed to do nothing, all while the junior and recently-returned lead technician worked to stop the leak. But their efforts were all for nought, as the explosion reduced the Little General to a dangerous pile of debris at 10:53 a.m., almost 30 minutes after the leak began. Clearly there was plenty of time to evacuate, so why didn’t they? Alas, it seems like we will never know. Of course, there was some good to come of this tragedy.
Patricia Mullins and Leta Farley, two of the employees injured in the blast, filed a $60 million lawsuit against multiple companies whom they blamed for the explosion, including Appalachian Heating LLC, ThompsonGas Propane Partners LLC, Ferrellgas Inc., BP America Inc., Little General Store, Inc. and Godfather’s Pizza Inc. In addition to this lawsuit, the numerous safety recommendations made by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board were adopted. The recommendations include the improvement of training requirements for technicians and the improvement of emergency response actions from on-scene technicians and 911 operators. In conclusion, based upon my understanding of the social responsibilities and ethics of businesses, this is a clear example of businesses ignoring their responsibilities. By allowing their first tank to be placed in such a dangerous area, the business placed their employees in danger, completely ignoring the entire concepts of both job safety and employee well-being. It was their place to ensure that their employees would be safe, and they completely ignored
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...being held accountable, the city officials themselves were also held accountable because of improper safety regulations. Showing that the city itself should be at fault for not enforcing safety regulations for such things as fire escapes, that were not in working order. These unprecedented circumstances just lay down the blueprint for what is now the correct way to set regulations for industrial factory conditions.
Based on the Miles and Snow strategy typology, Dollar Tree would be categorized as a prospector and an analyzer. Dollar Tree initially started off as a prospector when it was created as an off-shoot of the retail chain K &K Toys (Parnell, 2014). Prospectors focus on intrapreneurship, which involves the creation of new business ventures within an existing organization (Parnell, 2014). When K & K Toys was divested in 1991, it was done so in order to focus their energies on developing the concept of the dollar store, which in turn gave them the first mover advantage for being first in that particular market (Parnell, 2014). Just as prospector companies places priority on new product and service development to meet the changing needs and
On April 4, 2008 Goldman, Sachs & Co. submitted a prepared prospectus for Dollar General Corporation. According to the prospectus, Dollar General is the largest discount retailer in the United States by number of stores. They serve a broad customer base and majority of products are priced at $10 or less and approximately 30% of products are price at $1 or less. They believe that their combination of value and convenience is what has kept them ahead of their competitors since opening in 1955. Dollar General has had substantial growth in recent years, growing their number of stores from 5,540 as of February 1, 2002 to 8,229 as of February 2, 2007. This growth encouraged Richard Dreiling,
James Cash Penney, founder of JCPenney stores, gained his retail experience working for Golden Rule Mercantile Company, after graduating from high school in 1902. He quickly rose through the ranks as a salesperson, store manager, and partner. In 1906, at the age of 26, he opened his first retail store in Kemmerer, Wyoming the first to become JCPenney store. 1913, he had 34 stores with over $2 million in sales and incorporated JCPenney Company, Inc. JCPenney’s success was due to the popular private-label brand that were good quality, lower prices than the named brands, and these products yielded high profits. In 1927, headquarters opened in New York and in 1929, the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and store manager/owners traded in their portions of individual stores for stock in the company. JCPenney’s survives the depression, providing basic goods and services at lower prices and increased profits.
for the workers. All the blame is not due to poor design and construction flaws, but to the oil companies for not teaching the employees about the system. This disaster could have been prevented if the engineers and oil companies were not blinded by their ignorant beliefs that the Ocean Ranger was unsinkable.
On April 17, 2013, the community of West, Texas, suffered a devastating and heartbreaking event in the evening hours. After a fire broke out inside the West Fertilizer plant, a massive explosion leveled the facility, caused millions of dollars in damage to surrounding buildings, and took the lives of over a dozen people. Sadly, the majority of those killed were volunteer firefighters who had responded to the fire and were unable to retreat to a safe distance before the explosion. Nearly 200 injuries were also reported to have been treated at local hospitals (Wood, 2013). The explosion was said to be caused by the combination of the fire and large stores of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the plant.
Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Sears Holdings Corporation was formed as a result of Kmart Holdings Corporation’s acquisition of Sears & Roebuck Company. It was incorporated on November 23, 2004. It is an integrated retailer and holdings company to a variety of well-known, highly-quality consumer brands.
What core competencies do you think the company has and what is needed to exploit opportunity and counter threats.
The name Walmart has become a brand name that is synonymous with the American culture since it opened its first store in Rogers Arkansas in 1962. Walmart since then, has remained competitive in the global market and has managed to sustain its competitive edge globally even in times of recession. Walmart over the years has had to compete with new emerging retailers such as Target, Kmart, Home Depot, Dollar General and Costco to name a few, in addition to online giants such as Amazon and Alibaba Express. It however has managed to sustain itself as a marketable and highly competitive brand in the global market.
A1: Dollar General's main business strategy is to focus on being the leading distributors of consumable basics, with 30% of the merchandise at $1.00 or less. Dollar General believes in maintaining an assortment of consumable merchandise and making shopping for everyday items hassle free and simplistic.
For every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $68 of that will stay local compared to $43 if spent at a “big box store”. Even though people believe that local businesses are not as beneficial as a big box store, buying locally not only benefits the business but also the community because buying locally builds a strong community and the money you spend at a local business gets put back into the community.
How does managerial planning for Project Impact take place at different levels within the organization?
BP turbulent history can be considered the impalement to the current safety and operational procedures. BP had emphasized personal safety and improvements, but the company had a personal injury rates that accounted for 95% of the injuries related to the oil industry. Following the Gulf oil spill disaster, a number of safety recommendations were endorsed by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. It was then BP realized the future of the company was in its on hands and possibly sealed, if they didn’t address the much needed safety and operational procedures. The organization had a clear understanding
...he firm foresaw the significant probability of harm to firefighters using the training facility and acted to communicate the discovered risks to the government organization awarding them the contract. Communication was essential in persuading the government to address the safety issues because the site met the requirements set forth by law, reducing the perception of risk, and the design choice of replacing jet fuel with liquid propane created the unintended consequence of an increased risk that otherwise may have gone unnoticed if not for the actions of Giffels’ consulting firm. Giffels’ strategy to remain persistent in refusing to complete the contract and highlighting the significant risk his firm discovered proved successful when dealing with a client that at first appeared to have taken a minimalist approach by staying with the minimum requirements of the law.
Walmart serves about 14 million customers each day. When Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 I’m sure he didn’t expect it to become as big of a retail store as it is now. 42 years after being founded, Walmart now has 4,253 stores across the world, and brings in $405 billion dollars a year. This kind of success doesn’t just happen overnight.