A tragedy occurred in the early spring of 2005 at a refinery in Texas City, Texas. Today marks the 17th year since a series of explosions killed 15 workers and injured nearly 200 more.

For many years, RedGuard has been known for its blast-resistant buildings within the oil and gas industry. It started in 2005, after a tragic event in Texas City. At the time, the company was known for the steel storage buildings that it leased to companies for their rugged and spacious storage capacity. Because they had the infrastructure and capabilities already in place, they were asked to design a protective steel modular building. The goal was to protect people the way steel containers had protected the equipment on the site of that tragedy, when personnel had perished in simple work trailers, while tool shed containers remained intact. 

The following article was originally published in the May 2020 issue of BIC magazine. It's published here in its entirety, including details that were edited out of the original article for space. It was written by Bryan Bulling, one of RedGuard's subject matter experts and our Northeastern US Regional Area Manager. While the use of blast-resistant buildings is widespread, there are still many in the industry who have not utilized modular buildings during outages and projects. Instead, they stage operations outside the facility and transport labor in and out.