Walked through a shut down refinery in Baton Rouge and noticed something weird

I was doing a boiler inspection last Tuesday at an old refinery off River Road. The place has been closed for about 4 years but the steam lines still had some pressure in them. I popped a hatch on a 50 foot drum and found a nest of raccoons living in the insulation. Made me think about how we never really shut things down clean. Has anyone else run into wildlife inside equipment on a dead job?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie8041mo ago

Man I gotta say that half-eaten sandwich comparison is way too accurate lol. At this one shutdown I worked in Port Arthur we pulled a panel off a decommissioned compressor skid and found a whole possum family sleeping in the oil drain pan. The momma possum looked at me like I was the one intruding on her home. It makes you wonder how many of these "shut down" sites are really just abandoned buildings that still have power and heat running through them. The wildlife knows what's up better than the safety managers do.

bennett.harper1mo ago

Has anyone else ever tried to explain to a foreman that the "strange hissing noise" is actually just a family of opossums sleeping in the steam traps? I swear, half the time when we "shut down" a site, we're just leaving it like a half-eaten sandwich (messy and probably attracting critters). Found a squirrel nest made entirely of shredded safety vests once, which felt like a pretty accurate metaphor for my career.

alicemurphy1mo ago

Ain't it weird how safety vests are actually the perfect nesting material for squirrels? Honestly, I bet the vests getting shredded is just the universe telling us how much those things are just for show half the time. Ngl, if I ever find a opossum family in a steam trap, I'm just clocking out and letting foreman figure it out himself.