don parus, a safety conscious engineer, took over the refinery a few months later and was trying to turn things around. >> don was the refinery manager, or as locals liked to say, he was the second mayor of the town. the workforce tended to trust in him because, i think, for the first time, they were having a refinery manager who was harping a little bit more about safety. >> narrator: one of the first things parus did was commission an employee survey. in it, workers talked about their "exceptional degree of fear." they worried about dying. >> there was a fatality once, approximately every 18 months or so. the feeling of the workforce was that there was an imminent catastrophic accident that could happen in the near future. >> narrator: parus alerted his boss in london, john manzoni, bp's chief of refining, about the severity of safety issues. >> don parus had held several meetings with john manzoni, the head of refining. in each, he expressed grave concerns about the safety of working at the texas city refinery. >> narrator: parus even went to bp headquarters in london and showed manzo