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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Significant safety lapses by management of Bayer CropScience's Institute plant caused a fatal August 2008 explosion that could have turned into a disaster worse than Bhopal, according to evidence presented Tuesday to a congressional committee.

Bayer plant officials continued to use long-deficient equipment, leading employees to bypass safety gear in the plant's Methomyl-Larvin unit where the explosion occurred, U.S. Chemical Safety Board officials told a House subcommittee.

The runaway explosion sent a 5,000-pound chemical vessel rocketing into the air and across the plant, where it could have easily smashed into a nearby methyl isocyanate tank, "the consequences of which could have eclipsed the 1984 disaster in India," congressional committee staffers concluded in their report.

"Had I known then what I know right now, I would have ordered an evacuation," Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said after testifying and listening to other witnesses at the hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in Washington, D.C.

John Bresland, chairman of the federal Chemical Safety Board, said his agency's investigation has so far determined that Bayer didn't properly train plant operators to use a new computer control system, overworked employees and did not correct deficient procedures discovered at least a year prior to the explosion.

The explosion occurred in a unit where Bayer makes methomyl, which it then uses to produce Larvin, the company's brand name of the insecticide thiodicarb.

But the Institute plant is best known for its production and use of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, the chemical that killed thousands of people when it leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in December 1984.

Bayer uses MIC to make methomyl, and the methomyl unit includes a "day tank" that can hold nearly 40,000 pounds of MIC. That tank is located about 80 feet from the location of the August explosion.

Bresland told lawmakers the explosion occurred while workers were restarting the unit after a long maintenance shutdown period. Equipment had been replaced, and a new computer control system installed. But workers were not adequately trained on the system prior to startup, Bresland said.

More specifically, the explosion occurred in a "residue treater," a tank where waste methomyl and other chemicals were recovered to be burned in the plant's power house. But Bayer had for some time been using an undersized heating unit on the residue treater, and this forced plant operators to bypass critical safety systems intended to prevent methomyl from flowing into the vessel until it reached a certain temperature.

Investigators also concluded that operators had not pre-filled the treater vessel with heated solvent, as required by the startup procedure.

"These deviations likely contributed to the runaway reaction and the resulting explosion," Bresland testified.

Since the August incident, congressional investigators said, "serious questions have also been raised" about Bayer's handling of key evidence about the explosion and fire:

• Critical video footage of the explosion is missing because an unidentified contractor disabled the recording function from surveillance cameras inside the Larvin unit;

• Air monitors designed to detect MIC inside the Larvin unit were "out of service for maintenance" at the time of the explosion;

• A protective "blast mat" around the MIC tank was removed and destroyed after the explosion, foreclosing further analysis of damage caused by shrapnel and debris.

Testimony and committee evidence also outlined how Bayer officials and attorneys tried to use plant security secrecy rules to hide information about the incident, and revealed efforts by Bayer public relations agents to try to discredit local citizens and The Charleston Gazette.

"Evidence obtained by the committee demonstrates that Bayer engaged in a campaign of secrecy by withholding critical information from local, county and state emergency responders; by restricting the use of information provided to federal investigators; by undermining news outlets and citizen groups concerned about the dangers posed by Bayer's activities; and by providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public," said the 20-page report by congressional investigators.

In one memo, Bayer public relations consultant Ann Green outlined the company's strategy for dealing with the group People Concerned About MIC and with the Gazette.

"Our goal with People Concerned About MIC should be to marginalize them," Green wrote. "Take a similar approach to The Charleston Gazette."

William Buckner, Bayer CropScience's CEO, conceded in his prepared testimony that his company had hoped that a set of obscure Coast Guard secrecy rules for plants along waterways would allow it to avoid the explosion probe turning into a debate on the Institute plant's huge MIC stockpile.

"There were, of course, some business reasons that motivated our desire for confidentiality," Buckner said. "These included a desire to limit negative publicity generated about the company or the Institute facility, to avoid public pressure to reduce the volume of MIC that is produced and stored at Institute by changing to alternative technologies, or even calls by some in our community to eliminate MIC production entirely."

Two workers -- Barry Withrow and Bill Oxley -- were killed in the incident, and committee investigators revealed Tuesday that eight other people, including six emergency responders, later reported symptoms of chemical exposure. Tens of thousands of Kanawha Valley residents were forced to take shelter in their homes.

Carper joined St. Albans Police Chief Joe Crawford and Mike Dorsey, homeland security chief for the state Department of Environmental Protection, in recounting for lawmakers how Bayer that night stonewalled local firefighters and other emergency responders who were trying to protect the public.

"We needed real information," said Dorsey, who explained that state officials weren't allowed in the plant until they threatened to have State Police arrest Bayer guards. "We just weren't getting what we needed."

Longtime local activist Pam Nixon, now the DEP's environmental advocate, said residents always get the run-around when they try to find out about problems at the Institute plant.

"For decades, people in the Institute area were asking valid health and safety questions, even before the 1984 Bhopal tragedy," Nixon told lawmakers. "The very same questions that were asked in the '80s and '90s were asked by different individuals during the public forums held after last year's fire and explosion."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.