What is the worst case scenario for you?

[SWLAFireDawg]

We all know industrial incidents have the potential for large scale exposure and neighborhood impact.......so what s the worst case scenario for you?


Without going into a ton of detail, give us an idea of what scares you most in your area of responsibility.


For me it is the roughly 100,000 gallons of mixed sulfuric acid and light end hydrocarbons in the reactor of our alkylation unit...given a vessel rupture....not only is there is a fire concern, but it is joined with a hazmat and offsite impact issue. Water increases the hazmat concern and causes offgases of SO2, and the acid eats up class B foam.

[BD6413]

I'm in a Refinery. :eek: - We process and manufacture Gasoline, Home Heating Oil, Racing Fuel, and have alot of refining and chemical process units through out our complex which is over 2 1/2 miles long by 1 1/2 miles wide.

There was a large explosion involving crude oil mixed with hydro-carbon vapors back in 1975 which caused an explosion and subsequent fire that killed 8 Philadelphia Firefighters and destroyed numerous pieces of City and Sunoco Fire Apparatus. Large Storage Tanks litterly blew apart - Fire burned for days after.

What scares me the most these days is acts of terrorisim. - No matter how secure any facility appears to be it can be voided and terroristic actions carried out. I also fear chemical leaks, and fires on the refinery. We have many more safety and suppression apparatus in place than back in 1975 and our safety standards are much higher {Like for example no one is allowed to smoke near processing units.......anymore:D

[mcaldwell]

Pretty minor here, but we have a 100,000 gallon propane tank farm at the entrance to our little village, with a large wooden exposure (non-sprinklered sewage treatment plant) barely 30 feet away from it. The tanks are oriented to blast directly through the heart of the village in the event of a cylinder-end failure.

We would be blowed up real good. :D

[ClariantERT]

The eight 10,000 gallon storage tanks of various Chlorosilanes throughout the plant as well as the various hydrocarbons.....:eek:

[SWLAFireDawg]

various Chlorosilanes eek:

That sounds nasty....can you eaborate on what that is? :o

OPPS....nevermind....I googled it.

[gordoffemt]

At our facility, chlorosilanes are the building block for nearly everything Dow Corning produces. If you have yet to google it, like some have, they are very toxic, flammable, and corrosive all at the same time with a major dislike for water. Any contact with moisture in the atmosphere will create HCl gas. Aside from the chlorosilanes, we have 3 one million gallon floating roof methanol tanks, we have sufuric acid, 2 500,000 gallon aqueous HCl tanks, heptane, we currently receive methanol by barge via the Ohio River and have a project in construction now to receive aqueous HCl by barge as well. Oh yeah, we are also the world's largest producer and user of methyl chloride.

Our ops folks do a great job of keeping all that stuff "in the pipes." But when something does happen we are fortunate to have approx. 130 fire hydrants on site that nearly all have monitor nozzles on them for vapor suppression. They are supplied by 2.5 million gallons of stored, dedicated fire water, backed up by 2 electric and 4 diesel fire pumps and 2 jockey pumps. If you hooked to one of our hydrants, you would have about 160 psi. at your disposal without a fire pump running.

Our worse case scenario as reported by law to the EPA is one, or both, of our 2 220 ft. tall distillation columns dumping their 500,000 lbs. of mixed chlorosilanes to the pad. The HCl cloud that would result has the potential in impact the outskirts of Louisville, KY from here. Just this week, we've set 2 more identical columns to the first 2 which should be running by the end of the year. Pretty neat stuff, huh?!

We don't get as many "smells and bells" as our municipal brothers, but any time we do could be "the big one." I always tell people that I don't get paid for what I do, but for what I might have to do!

[fyremanbob]

Nuke power plant here, obvious potential for radiation release and environmental impact many miles away. Thankfully many redundant systems that prevent that from all happening.

bob

[ClariantERT]

At our facility, chlorosilanes are the building block for nearly everything Dow Corning produces. If you have yet to google it, like some have, they are very toxic, flammable, and corrosive all at the same time with a major dislike for water. Any contact with moisture in the atmosphere will create HCl gas. Aside from the chlorosilanes, we have 3 one million gallon floating roof methanol tanks, we have sufuric acid, 2 500,000 gallon aqueous HCl tanks, heptane, we currently receive methanol by barge via the Ohio River and have a project in construction now to receive aqueous HCl by barge as well. Oh yeah, we are also the world's largest producer and user of methyl chloride.

Our ops folks do a great job of keeping all that stuff "in the pipes." But when something does happen we are fortunate to have approx. 130 fire hydrants on site that nearly all have monitor nozzles on them for vapor suppression. They are supplied by 2.5 million gallons of stored, dedicated fire water, backed up by 2 electric and 4 diesel fire pumps and 2 jockey pumps. If you hooked to one of our hydrants, you would have about 160 psi. at your disposal without a fire pump running.

Our worse case scenario as reported by law to the EPA is one, or both, of our 2 220 ft. tall distillation columns dumping their 500,000 lbs. of mixed chlorosilanes to the pad. The HCl cloud that would result has the potential in impact the outskirts of Louisville, KY from here. Just this week, we've set 2 more identical columns to the first 2 which should be running by the end of the year. Pretty neat stuff, huh?!

We don't get as many "smells and bells" as our municipal brothers, but any time we do could be "the big one." I always tell people that I don't get paid for what I do, but for what I might have to do!

Yes sir......... Dow is one of our biggest suppliers for chlorosilanes, as we sell to them the intermediates we make from the chlorosilanes!;)

[firespec35]

Most of our worst case scenarios here are environmental impact issues. Probably the worst on for injury impact would be our storage of Cl gas for water treatment and depending on the wind the plume could hit our major populated area and affect 1000-2000 people. Also we deal a little in experimental fuels and fires from those could be bad.

[ResCap661]

Worlds Largest Tank fire ever extinguished 2001
325,000 BBLs Capacity
Never want to go through that again

[SWLAFireDawg]

Worlds Largest Tank fire ever extinguished 2001
325,000 BBLs Capacity
Never want to go through that again

We train with Williams Fire and Hazard quite often, that fire comes up every time we train on tank fires and hired gun crews.

[ctcar2]

Wost case? A loss of one of our containment structures and spewing radiation for miles and miles around. That would constitute a BAD DAY!

[bum291]

We have several industrial facilities that deal with large amounts of dangerous chemicals, I can't decide if I'd hate that more than the following scenario:

There is an industry that has several tanks of cooled liquid natural gas IN THE CITY!, in case of a fire nearby and they get heated, they could rupture and explode, the evolving firecloud would radiate enormous amounts of heat. To make things even more unplesant, there is a large electrical transformer nearby, we have to watch how we would aim our water monitors that we would use to cool the tanks.

There has never been any fires at or close to the gas facilities, but there's been a few minor hazmat incidents and at least one VERY big close call.

[Brian003996]

Well the way our environmental, safety and health (E,H&S) department operates around our plant, I think the worst case is that a worker lights up a smoke in a totally non combustable area outside the buildings.

Reality is that our propane farm pops. A report done a couple years ago stated that if it ever really went, it would waste about a 1/4th mile area completely and do significant damage to up to a 1/2 mile.

The other bad one is that we have a serious anhydros ammonia leak. That couple really put a damper on things around here. We're also right next to a good size airport and that could be seriously effected by both scenarios.

[nmfire]

In my district? Propane tank farms at a commercial complex and a condo complex.

Just outside my district? Railroad tank cars.

A little further outside my district:
Wost case? A loss of one of our containment structures and spewing radiation for miles and miles around. That would constitute a BAD DAY!

[Firegod32]

We are one of the largest producers of clorine, vinyl chloride monomer and ethylene dichloride. Our worst case shows damage and chlorine odor up to 25 miles away.

[mdcook]

Coming to work every day knowing that I am the only person on my shift with any fire, EMS or Haz Mat training in the entire plant.

[Tooanfrom]

Coming to work every day knowing that I am the only person on my shift with any fire, EMS or Haz Mat training in the entire plant.



Should it all turn to custard--who is gonna be one busy little chap?

You will earn your "greengages" that day!

[georgen]

528 bed hospital here.

Relocation of one patient care unit due to a fire incident, isolated utility failure, chemical release within the unit, etc., is bad enough.

Total facility evacuation due to an internal disaster would be a worst case scenario.

Total facility evacuation due to a regional disaster would be our absolute worst case scenario.

And when it comes to inherent hazards, remember that hospitals are not just beds and band aids.

[InsuranceLCRep]

Man you guys keep folks like me awake at night after reading this thread! :eek: Thank god in your line of work you have low frequency, but a hell of lot of severity when it does happen as we would say in the insurance world. Be safe.:)

[Firegod32]

As a former LC myself, I wanted to transistion to a plant level for a while. It is amazing that at some plants that level of safety controls to keep bad things from happening. The more I dig into the control systems, the more ways I find that keep issues from happening. It isn't that way at all facilities, but it is at mine. I guess I am lucky there.

[chugiaklt2]

At our facility we have 750000 barrels aday of crude incoming, 18 crude tanks that hold 500000 barrels apiece, powerhouse, ballast water treatment, vapor recovery system ( giant pipebomb),ability to load 3 super tankers at a time, and other joys of crude oil processing.

[MasFoam81]

Over the years my company narrowed the focus of the core business, refining crude oil. Fortunately we eliminated production and use of several nasty chemicals like nitric acid, HF acid, phenolic acid, titanium tetrachloride to name just a few. We, however, greatly increased oil refining capacity and have typical refinery hazards but now on a grand scale. Huge crude oil, LPG and other finished product storage as well as numerous and varied process plants. More foam!