GALVESTON, Texas (AP) – For 30 months, Scott Kilbert has wrestled with the physical and emotional scars from a deadly explosion at BP PLC’s Texas City refinery.

He’s haunted by the memory of 15 friends and co-workers dying inside a trailer that was incinerated in the blast. Then there’s the “survivor’s guilt” – he should have been inside the trailer, too, and was saved only by running late for a meeting.

Kilbert believes the 2005 blast, which killed 15 people and injured more than 170 others, contributed to his hearing loss, back problems and post-traumatic stress syndrome. On Tuesday, he and three other workers who sued the oil company finally found a measure of closure and compensation.

Before the start of the 11th day of the first civil trial stemming from the accident, BP PLC announced a settlement with the four workers. The plaintiffs were tearful and shaken. One was too emotional to address reporters.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” said Kilbert, a 48-year-old instrumentation supervisor for construction company JE Merit.

Asked what he would say to BP, Kilbert said, “You can’t put it in the paper.”

BP declined to discuss specifics of the deal. The company has settled more than 1,600 suits and has another 1,200 pending, said spokesman Neil Chapman. BP has said it wants to settle all cases.

“All I can say is we’ve worked since the explosion to settle so people don’t have to go to court,” Chapman said after the deal was announced in court.

Attorney Brent Coon, who represented the four plaintiffs, also wouldn’t discuss details but said the settlement was fair for what his clients have gone through.

“The reality is that there’s no amount of money that BP could pay that would make these people whole,” he said.

David Wilson of Santa Fe, Texas, who worked for a mechanical contracting company, and his wife, Nara, suffered injuries similar to Kilbert’s. They filed separate lawsuits.

“I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to look them in the eye and tell them what I feel,” David Wilson said during brief remarks before he walked away sobbing.

The fourth plaintiff, Rolando Bocardo, a 41-year-old instrument fitter from Baytown, wept and said he was too emotional to talk.

“They have emotional scars worse than any physical scars,” said Coon, who added he hopes BP learned a lesson.

“When you see your buddies, co-workers, friends disintegrate before you, the psychological impact of being thrown into that kind of inferno – hell on earth – no one would understand.”

Before the latest settlement, the explosion cost the London oil company at least $2 billion in compensation payouts, repairs and lost profit. The settlement on this suit and 10 others was reached Monday night after a month-long negotiation with BP, Coon said.

A fifth lawsuit, filed by the estate of a contract worker whose suicide was attributed to trauma from the accident, was settled just before the trial began.

The blast erupted about 1:30 p.m. March 23, 2005, at the 1,200-acre site located about 40 miles southeast of Houston. About 1,800 people worked at the plant, which included 30 refinery units, but BP officials don’t know how many were there at the time.

The explosion rocked the refinery and sent flames and black smoke billowing into the sky. The blast was felt as far away as five miles, according to witnesses. Workers fought for hours to extinguish the fire before they could sift through the rubble for survivors.

The BP plant, one of five BP refineries in North America, at the time produced about 433,000 barrels of crude oil a day – 30 percent of BP’s North American gas supply and 3 percent of the U.S. supply.

The explosion occurred after a piece of equipment called a blowdown drum overfilled with highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons. The excess liquid and vapor hydrocarbons were then vented from the drum and ignited as the isomerization unit – a device that boosts the octane in gasoline – started up. Alarms and gauges that were supposed to warn of the overfilled equipment didn’t work properly.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, one of several agencies that probed the accident, found BP fostered bad management at the plant and that cost-cutting moves by BP were factors in the explosion.

BP released an internal report in May that said the plant’s culture seemed to ignore risk, tolerate noncompliance and accept incompetence.

The brief trial featured testimony from Don Parus, the plant’s former manager, who defended the company’s safety record and denied assertions that profits drove delays in repairs. Coon tried to contrast Parus’ comments with a study two months before the blast in which workers told of various safety problems at the plant.

The blast was the deadliest in the nation’s gas and chemical industry since an explosion at an Arco Chemical Co. plant in nearby Channelview killed 17 people in 1990.

Texas City is the site of the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. In 1947, a fire aboard a ship at the Texas City docks triggered an explosion that killed 576 people.

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Associated Press Writer Michael Graczyk in Houston contributed to this report.

AP-ES-09-18-07 1732EDT