Preparation the Key to Petrochemical Fire Safety

The response in the first few minutes to a petrochemical fire is critical to the final outcome, as anyone who has ever found themselves in that unenviable position will tell you. The fact of the matter is that irrespective of how sophisticated the detection and fire suppression installations, nothing will make up for a lack of emergency preparedness, inadequate training or poorly implemented incident management. The golden rule when preparing for such an emergency is: assume nothing and test everything.

First, it is essential to have a realistic understanding of the special risks associated with this type of fire and of the often unique challenges of the particular site. However, this is a task that needs to be entrusted to expert hands. Such risk assessments must be carried out and regularly updated by fire safety professionals who can demonstrate experience in these often volatile and special high-hazard environments.

Seeing the Big Picture.

Risk assessments for petrochemical plants, indeed for any high-hazard site, should not be limited to what might be described as “internal” fire safety threats and challenges. If evidence is needed of this, it is necessary only to look at what happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan where the disaster was triggered by an offshore earthquake and tsunami. In the current uncertain international climate, the risk assessor also has to consider the very real prospect of acts of terrorism aimed at headline-grabbing mass destruction of property and lives.

The assessor also needs to take into account what is going on immediately beyond the site’s perimeter fence: what spill-over risks do neighbouring properties – invariably also petrochemical plants of one form or another – and their processes pose; should neighbours’ emergency preparedness plans be integrated with the site under review; what facilities exist that can be shared, and can they be relied upon around the clock?

This can easily take the risk assessor outside his or her usual sphere of expertise. For example, should the site’s security defences be improved as part of the plan to lessen the likelihood of arson attack? When determining the on-site fire suppression requirements, the assessor should also take into account the resources that are available from the local emergency services, what specialist equipment does it have; how readily available is it; and how quickly can it be deployed?

It is also vitally important to audit the site’s emergency control centre arrangements. Without an effective emergency control centre, incident management and the integration of all of firefighting, medical care, site evacuation and spillage control will be impossible to achieve.

Maintaining Control

There are strong arguments in favour of having an off-site emergency control centre. As the explosion and ensuing fire at the Buncefield oil depot in the UK and similar petrochemical fires around the world have shown, on-site facilities can so easily be destroyed in large-scale incidents of this nature. With every minute counting, having to re-establish an emergency control centre is not a viable option. Arguably, petrochemical sites need both on-site and off-site emergency control centres, both of which need to reflect the unique circumstances that exist at the site, and the skills, knowledge and experience of the people manning them.

It is equally important to ensure that the right resources are ready at a moment’s notice, and this means more than just having the right equipment available. Important though that is, it is essential to take nothing form granted. What are the implications of the site’s water supply being damaged by an initial explosion, or if the fixed fire suppression equipment is destroyed in the initial blast? What if the devastation means that the site’s stock of foam concentrate is inaccessible?

Attempting to answer these questions is certainly not something to embark upon when an emergency occurs. Back-up resources have to be in place and, like every other aspect of effectively being prepared for a petrochemical fire, these stand-by resources have to be constantly under review and regularly tested.

This is where pre-fire planning is so important; to determine and test – in advance – precisely what resources are needed for each and every fire scenario. This needs to encompass what equipment is needed, where it should be positioned, the availability and pressure of nearby water supplies, the need to cool adjacent facilities and the impact of high winds on the effectiveness of these plans.

Training for Performance

There is absolutely no substitute for training. Site incident controllers and personnel with operational responsibilities have to be trained to take control at the scene of an incident; emergency control centre staff have to be ready to direct operations; fire wardens and appropriate staff at all levels need to be competent in the correct use of breathing equipment, first aid and conflict management.

On-site practice, together with full-scale exercising and testing of every part of the emergency arrangements are equally important. And this needs to be conducted in as close to a “real life” scenario as possible. A range of challenges should be built into these exercises to test every possible set of circumstances. They will also create confidence in the team’s ability to safely tackle the emergency, either temporarily as the site’s front-line defence until the emergency services arrive, or as the site’s professional emergency response resource.

Effective Resourcing.

None of this, of course, lessens the need to provide the most effective detection, alarm and suppression equipment. This will probably take the form of fixed equipment providing primary around-the-clock protection for such structures as cone roof tanks; open-top floating roof tanks; covered floating roof tanks; horizontal tanks; bunds, and spill grounds. However, it cannot be overstressed that, potentially, all of this equipment is itself at risk in the event of an explosion.

It is important to consider what resources the local brigade has, and what additional mobile resources need to be available. Of course, an indispensible resource is water, and dynamic system testing is the only way to provide evidence that the system can be relied upon to deliver the required quantity, pressure and flow rate. Hydrant flow testing measures the fire main pressure drop and establishes what residual pressure is available to ensure that hydrant flow values are sufficient to cover the risk.

While petrochemical fires are, thankfully, not everyday occurrences, when they do occur the consequences can be economically and environmentally devastating, as well as being seriously life-threatening on a significant scale. So it is essential to move away from exclusively considering what to do in the aftermath of a fire, and start paying much more attention on avoiding being faced with the prospect. More time and energy needs to be devoted to implementing sustainable measures that will reduce or eliminate the risk of fire. Certainly, this means giving more thought to both passive and active fire protection, and seeing fire engineering as a dynamic and indispensable business continuity process, and devising and implementing fully integrated emergency and disaster management plans.

Contact: For further information, go to www.sembcorp.co.uk/protection/

(Author)

Paul Frankland is Vice President of Sembcorp Protection