Well, i certainly can't argue against the possibility of such a thing; certainly there are more than enough examples of such behavior...
But my perspective, as a main control room operator for v. large industrial facility, is a bit different.
The people bringing these refineries back online come from the surrounding community. Many of them have just lost everything, some of them have probably lost family members. They are, or soon will be, working round the clock 24-7 to restore equipment that was hastily shutdown, probably not even according to procedure. Much of their control systems and high power equipment have been submerged in salt water. Wires are ground faulted, equipment damaged, relays sticky... dead fish stuck in motor vents... a million possible things are wrong.
Gas: The good 'ol days 2245Bush went on last nite and categorically endorsed price increases by saying the hurricane affected not only the...
And these guys will be working at a fever pitch to get their stuff back online. They know how important their refineries are, and there's a LOT of pressure, including direct contact from the President to the refinery chiefs, to get them going. They don't have the luxury of going through everything twice with a fine toothed comb.
The job of restoring the Louisiana refineries is more akin to making a battleship combat capable after taking multiple torpedo hits and then steaming into battle at all ahead flank.
Exhaustion, the fog of confusion, non-standard operating conditions and flaky equipment -- even with the best of intentions and competency, someone is going to overlook something, get confused, fail to anticipate, make a mistake ...and something is going to blow up.
Guarenteed.
.max
