OREGON, Ohio — It's been nine months since brothers Ben and Max Morrissey died in a fire while trying to contain a flammable liquid that was overflowing a fuel gas mix drum at the former BP-Husky Toledo Refinery.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board on Tuesday released a timeline of the events compiled from on-scene evidence and witness testimony that led up to the fatal fire in September 2022.
WTOL 11 spoke with Max's wife, Darah Morrissey, about what the revelations of the brothers' heroic efforts mean to her.
"That whole place could have blown up," she said. "I have no doubt in my mind they were doing everything and everything they could to save more lives, but obviously I think they would want to be here today."
Now, Darah is trying to figure out how to move on after losing her husband.
"I'm a single mom, trying to deal with my grief, [my kids'] grief and trying to run a business," she said.
That business is Red Eye Pie, a pizza and ice cream shop she owned with Max. A photo of him hangs in the restaurant's window.
Darah said even thinking about that day, Sept. 20, 2022, is still painful.
And the latest briefing she got from the CSB took her back to the incident once more.
"Basically, everything they were saying we already knew," she said. "But it gave us validation that yes, this is what happened."
According to the report, flammable liquid naphtha began to fill a fuel gas mix drum that is "normally vapor-only" and overflowed. This then sent the naphtha into piping that led directly into the plant's various boilers and furnaces.
Ben and Max, along with two other workers, responded to an alarm to drain the naphtha.
The other two workers left and the Morrissey brothers began draining the naphtha from the mix drum directly to the ground, which created a vapor cloud.
An approaching rainstorm then shifted winds, likely pushing the vapor cloud toward an ignition source -- a nearby crude oil furnace -- which ignited the cloud and caused the fire, the report states.
"When I look back, that phone call changed my life forever," Darah said of the call she received when she first learned Max had been sent to the hospital. Max left behind Darah and their two boys.
Ben left behind his wife Kaddie and their two children, the youngest of whom was born after Ben died.
Darah said while the children may be too young to remember their fathers, she'll instill the legacy they leave behind.
"I think they were heroes, I tell our boys they were heroes," she said. "He'll always be our superhero."