CLEARBROOK, Minn. -- The two Enbridge Energy employees who died in a Wednesday industrial accident were sitting in a vehicle about 20 feet away at the time of the explosion, a company official said.
Leon Zupan, Enbridge vice president of operations, would later deny citing the location of the victims, but at least two separate media sources recording a Thursday news conference said he made the remark.
Both victims, Steve Arnovich, 35, and David Mussatti, 27, reside in Superior.
Clearwater County Sheriff Mike Erickson said the intense fire from Wednesday's blast subsided enough to extract the two bodies from the accident site about 2 a.m. The fire was completely out three hours later.
More than 50 emergency responders worked to secure the scene and control the fire, Erickson said. Strong west winds pushed the flames and smoke east toward homes, 10 of which had to be evacuated. Those families were allowed to return Thursday afternoon.
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Enbridge officials on Thursday called steep crude oil price jumps since the explosion an "overreaction" because of the small amount of time the pipelines were or will be out of service. Oil prices returned to normal levels later in the day.
Three of the four Enbridge pipelines shut down after the blast had resumed operations by late Thursday. It could take two to three days to repair the damaged pipeline and get it back into service.
"This kind of incident has never happened before" to Enbridge, said Richard Bird, executive vice president of fluids pipelines.
Nineteen Enbridge workers were on site when the blast occurred at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday about 90 miles southeast of Grand Forks. Five vehicles also were engulfed by the blaze, which was fed by fine sprays of crude oil.
Zupan could only speculate on a cause.
"It's only suspicion, but one source of the ignition could have been the vehicles that were parked near the point of ignition," he said.
Officials said some of the vehicles may have been running at the time, possibly to provide warmth from the bitter cold conditions. It was 11 degrees, but the wind would have made it feel like 5 below.
Crews were replacing a short section of pipe that had developed a pin-hole-sized leak with a new section. The pipeline was not operating at full pressure because it was under maintenance, Zupan said.
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The leak was fixed with a repair sleeve earlier this month. Wednesday, workers shut down the 34-inch pipeline to remove the 11-foot section that included the pinhole and sleeve. They replaced it with the new section, but oil apparently leaked where it joined the old line.
Officials said the pipe was not being welded at the time of the fire.
"This would not have been a dangerous job," Zupan said. "It's work that has been done many, many times in the past."
Most of the workers were more than 30 feet away at the time of the blast, but the two who were killed were "much closer" than the others, Zupan said.
Enbridge spokeswoman Denise Hamsher said Thursday that officials weren't discussing exact locations of any of their workers, only that they were working in several different areas.
Residual oil still is on the ground at the site, in the excavation, but vacuum trucks are on site cleaning it up. The rest burned off. There was no firm estimate how much oil was spilled.
Because the ground is frozen, Enbridge officials said they feel there will be no environmental impact. Doug Bellefeuille of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency agreed it's not a large environmental issue.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The Grand Forks Herald is a Forum Communications newspaper.
