The laboratory is focusing on the area of the mill where the blast ignited. They are also looking at the type of wood that was milled, including pine beetle wood that tends to produce a dry sawdust.

Natural gas and propane is also being examined as possible fuel sources, while friction and other electric components are being looked at as possible ignition sources. 

The driver allegedly halted the bus when he saw flames pouring from the engine; he then panicked and ran away leaving around 50 passengers to try to escape through the rear exit. However, the rear door jammed and a stack of goods further blocked the only exit route. The driver, who is being held for questioning, is said to have told police that a short circuit on the vehicle that in all probability was poorly maintained may have caused the fire. 

The incident in the village of Sabon Gajiri in northern Nigeria was the latest in a series of fire incidents affecting the community, leading to loss of property worth millions of naira.

According to local media reports there was no immediate response from the fire service and the fire lasted for several hours and had begun to subside before firefighters arrived on the scene.

Repair work was being carried out at the hotel and the area manager of Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, Kevin Thomas, is quoted in the local news media as saying that investigators had some "fairly clear information" about how it began. There is a strong suspicion that the fire was started by a tar heating barrel on the third floor. 100 firefighters attended the blaze.

The remains of the 120-bedroom building are now believed to be structurally dangerous and a detailed investigation into the fire is being carried out by police and the fire service, but the fire was not believed to be suspicious. 

The fire gutted the front of the supermarket, but local firefighters managed to stop it from spreading before more firefighters arrived to help tackle the blaze.

Fire investigators are endeavouring to ascertain the cause of the blaze. 

Three of the firefighters, including one lieutenant, were injured when a stairwell collapsed; another was treated for a foot injury, while the fifth had a hand injury. One resident of the building was taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.

Firefighters worked quickly to prevent the fire from spreading to engulf other nearby timber buildings. However, flames spread to at least one adjacent building. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but it is believed to have begun in the stairwell.
 

Reports suggest that they were unable to escape the inferno as, once again, windows were barred and doors were locked. Only one person survived. The centre’s residents lived in a dormitory on the second floor of the two-story home. The ground floor was used for offices and medical examination rooms. Investigators say the fire may have broken out on the ground floor, blocking the path of those on the second floor. The cause of the fire is unknown. 

At times, flames reached the height of nearby trees – approximately the height of a six-storey building.

It is believed firefighters were able to limit the damage due only to the fact that the building is divided into compartments. The flames were extinguished within an hour, but several units stayed until the following day to conduct a damage assessment. The cause of the blaze is so far unknown.
 

The explosion was at a unit of Bangkok Synthetics Co in Map Ta Phut industrial estate in Rayong province, one of the biggest industrial areas in Thailand. An initial investigation found that the blast occurred when workers were putting toluene – a chemical widely used as an industrial feedstock and as a solvent – into a tank.

A leak of toxic chemicals has been brought under control and local reports say that none of the villagers have been affected by toxic emissions. However, thousands of people have been evacuated from factories within a three kilometre radius of the factory to prevent them from inhaling toxic gases. 

Welcome to the April edition of the Asia Pacific Fire Magazine's monthly e-news bulletin. This news service brings you April's latest fire news and technology based product information from around the Asia Pacific region. We hope you enjoy our news service. If you have any comments or information you would like us to include in future newsletters, please contact...

Mark Seton at mark.seton@apfmag.com

No casualties were reported, but it is believed that an aromatics facility at the site, which has a 140,000 tonnes/year benzene unit, may have also been shut following the outage at the cracker.

Prior to the fire, the factory produced 40 percent of CPC's total butadiene, an important industrial chemical used as a monomer in the production of synthetic rubber. Earlier in the day, the Kaohsiung City Bureau of Environmental Protection slapped a fine of NT$1 million on the refinery for air pollution. 

The dry winter, the early onset of warm weather and strong winds, as well as local people's habit of burning old grass in the spring have resulted in an unusual number of wildfires across Siberia and the far east region this month. A total of 111 fires have been reported.

The total area damaged by wildfires in Russia in 2012 stands at 100,000 hectares (1,000 square kilometres), nearly three times more than in the same period of 2011. In 2010, central Russia was blanketed by wildfires, which covered some 200,000 hectares of land and filled many cities, including Moscow, with acrid smog. 

Guide to Fire Alarm Category Selection is a guidance document on the selection and specification of fire alarm category in accordance with BS 5839-1, while Fact File 51: Government Guidance on Fire Alarm Systems, provides guidance on what the English, Welsh and Scottish legislation recommend as the minimum category of fire alarm systems for various building occupancies. Fact File 53: Guide to Test and Inspections highlights the service intervals for fire protections systems, their frequency, actions to be carried out and what should be recorded and where.

All the documents are available free from the FIA website at www.fia.uk.com. 

The fire broke out in a mound of scrap metal and, at one stage, the fire stretched 20 metres across its base and up to nine metres high, prompting the Department of Community Safety to warn residents of north Brisbane to close their doors and windows. Residents across the nearby suburbs reported the burning smell but it is not known whether the smoke was toxic.

The cause of the fire is still unknown. 

A huge volume of flammable gas leaked and exploded after the chemical plant caught fire. Some tanks containing VDF gas – a flammable and narcotic gas – on the ground floor of the plant's high-rise workshop caught fire. Firefighters rescued three injured workers trapped in the flames, and evacuated other workers out of the building.

An investigation into the cause of the blast is under way. 

Activation of the sprinkler flow at the hospital alerted security officers to there being a fire in the building. Smoke filled part of the basement creating a further hazard to the fire, but within the hour, the threat was over following attendance by the Kamloops Fire Rescue service.

Fire inspectors are looking into the cause of the blaze but are quoted as saying: “…the sprinkler did its job; it suppressed the fire and kept it to a minimum…”
 

It is believed they were in the city illegally and were from the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. A small space heater may have been responsible for starting the fire. This was the second high-profile fire on the night in the city.

Earlier, flames raged for hours on the top of a skyscraper under construction that had no fire prevention system. The building, in Moscow's new financial district, is destined to become Europe's tallest building.
 

A combination of high winds, low humidity and no precipitation enabled the wildfires to grow and spread quickly. Many of the fires were on steep, rocky terrain making it difficult for firefighters to reach the flames.

The first fire started at the Kenya Power substation outside Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, which serves the airport, Embakasi estates and the surrounding area. The substation had not been commissioned and contractors were still on site. No causalities were reported.

The second fire burnt to the ground more than a hundred houses at Tassia Estate. Residents are reported as saying that the fire was caused by a faulty electric cooker.
 

An explosion started the fire on the second floor of the detached Blandfield Works building occupied by MacFarlan Smith, one of the world’s oldest pharmaceutical companies, having produced controlled drugs, including opiates and narcotics, for almost 200 years.

An investigation is underway into the cause of the explosion. Neither the initial blast nor the ensuing fire resulted in any casualties, although reports suggest that substantial damage was caused to pipelines in the factory. 

The rules will be phased in during a transition period and companies will have to comply with them fully by June 2016.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that such labels could prevent more than 40 deaths and about 500 workplace injuries and illnesses from exposure to hazardous chemicals each year. About 43 million U.S. workers come into contact with hazardous materials, so the aim is to make the labels easier to understand and less confusing, particularly for low-literacy workers. 

The explosion occurred in a shaft at the Dahuang No 2 coal mine, at Dengta, where 23 miners were working. The cause of the explosion is still unclear.

The Dahuang mine is a privately run enterprise and is believed to have all of the required legal licenses for coal mining. According to information online, the Dahuang mine was established in 2000, employing no more than 100 miners. 

The presence of a sizable gas cloud that originated thousands of metres below the seabed sparked the new fears. Total has not yet found a way to stop the gas leak, and engineers are believed to have told the company that a relief well - one possible option to stop the leak - could take months to drill. Currently, Total is saying that it could take six months to halt the flow of gas.

Engineers are drawing up plans to tackle the leak and prevent the flare from coming into contact with the gas cloud. However, the platform is currently off limits to the engineers due to the toxic and explosive plumes pumping out of the wellhead. A flare needed to relieve pressure in the platform by purging excess gas has continued to burn less than 100 metres from the leak, and engineers say changes in wind and weather could lead to an explosion. 

The guidance is designed to be read in conjunction with DD 8489 - 1: 2011, Fixed fire protection systems, Industrial and commercial watermist systems, Code of practice for design and installation; and with the draft European standard prEN 14972, Fixed fire-fighting systems – Watermist systems – Design and installation. NFPA 750 also contains details of the minimum requirements for the design, installation, maintenance and testing of watermist fire protection systems. The new guide is available free of charge to BAFSA and Fire Industry Association (FIA) members, and costs £15.00 for non-members. 

The 11-deck cruise ship, carrying 600 passengers and 411 crew members, suffered an engine-room fire that disabled the engines and left the liner temporarily stranded off the southern Philippines coast. This maritime fire is the latest in a string of accidents that has focused global attention on the safety of modern cruise ships. Five crew members suffered from smoke inhalation with one requiring serious medical attention. 

In the quiet backblocks of Columboola, 350km northwest of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, along the Warrego highway between Miles and Chinchilla buried bombs have formed part of the local folklore for nearly 70 years. In 1942/1943 the Columboola site was a designated as a US Army chemical weapons storage base. During a three- year period during the war the site was home to in excess of 170,000 HD (distilled sulphur mustard agent) mustard chemical rounds that were stored as part of the strategic “Brisbane Line” of defence; a chain of supply and weapons bases designed to provide support in the event of an east coast invasion.

Rumours of buried Jeeps and Harley Davidson motorbikes abound in these parts, and while no such earthly treasures have presented themselves just yet, some slightly less enticing gifts from the past have recently come to light. In 2009, during a standard due-diligence survey of a prospective open cut coal mining operation, a burial of 144 HD mustard rounds was discovered by contractors in a series of pits across the site. Police and subsequently Defence was notified and so began the biggest chemical weapons investigation and destruction campaign to be undertaken in Australia since the Second World War. The Columboola project has, in many respects, re-written the book in terms of how to undertake an effective and collaborative effort between State, Federal and international government agencies, private industry and the community.

Columboola Heritage

The Columboola site comprises some 730 hectares of land on a pancake-flat floodplain in a paddock in the middle of nowhere – an ideal site for the surreptitious storage of chemical rounds. 

The site is covered by old established stands of ironbark, bull oak and popular box trees that formed ideal camouflage from aerial surveillance activities. As happens to this day, munitions undergoing the rigorsoftransport and handling, occasionally fail and ‘leakers’ and damaged rounds are somewhat of an inevitability. Standard practice during the war, and in fact up until quite recently, was for the munitions to be buried or submersed as an appropriate means of disposal. The trick for those of us investigating the site nearly 70 years later, in the near complete absence of accurate historical records, is to understand where these rounds were kept and how they were disposed of at the site.

Munitions Destruction

The nature of the current works at the Columboola site was divided into two streams: destruction and further investigation. The first and primary stream of work involved the Commonwealth’s requirements as a signatory to the International Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Treaty, which is regulated by the Office for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in The Hague. Under the treaty requirements, ASNO (Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office), as the Commonwealth representative, is required to submit a plan, under relatively strict timelines, to outline the management and disposal strategy for the munitions. Defence manages this plan and, as a result, they released a tender through the DUXO Panel (Defence Un-exploded Ordinance Panel) in late 2009 seeking responses from industry to undertake the destruction of the 144 munitions. Ultimately Milsearch, a private demilitarisation contractor based in Canberra, was successful in securing the munitions destruction contract and the TC-60 munitions destruction system provided by CH2M Hill in the US was selected as the preferred destruction technology.

Milsearch deployed to the Columboola site in August 2010 and spent the next six months preparing the site for the upcoming assessment and eventual destruction activities. Due to the isolated nature of the site this involved the establishment of all required infrastructure including roads, buildings, power, water and waste water. Milsearch partnered with OPEC Systems to complete the civil and structural works at the site. Over 12,000 cubic metres of road base was imported from local quarries to form 6km of access roads and 14,000 square metres of hardstands required for the works infrastructure. Construction efforts at the site were not helped by the wettest season on record (never good when you are working on a floodplain) but a Herculean effort by the numerous sub-contractors involved saw the timelines met and by April 2011 the TC-60 system was ready to accept its first round and the final round was destroyed in May 2011

For those with a technical bent, the TC-60 is a mature batch thermal destruction technology that has been in operation around the world for over ten years and has been involved in the destruction of over 45,000 chemical rounds including mustard, phosgene and HC smoke. The TC-60 offers a controlled detonation process using proprietary donor explosives to implode munitions under intense pressure and heat. The explosives and toxic fill contained in the munitions are destroyed by detonation, heat and pressure in the resulting fireball (thermal oxidation). A comprehensive, multi-stage air pollution control system destroys any residuals that are contained in the associated off-gassing process and a highly accurate monitoring system tracks potential contaminants allowing confirmation of successful destruction.

Stakeholder Engagement

The process of delivering the destruction phase of the Columboola project to fruition involved a strong collaborative approach between the stakeholders. To facilitate communication between the numerous involved parties a central Queensland Coordinating Group was established to assist Milsearch and Defence to confirm that the project complies with State legislation and regulations in regard to such areas as workplace health and safety and environmental protection. The function of local area coordination was managed through the regional Director of Emergency Management, Queensland.

During the assessment and destruction phases of the works, Milsearch provided the initial decontamination response adjacent to the destruction facility while a trained team from the Queensland Fire Service(QFS), located a short distance away, stood up a comprehensive CBRN decontamination system to ensure that any major incidents were able to be expediently dealt with. Over an eight- week period QFS rostered in teams of six responders on a seven-day roster.

Similarly the Queensland Ambulance Service stood up an on-site medical response capability including ambulance and paramedic support to assist the teams on-site medical support capabilities. DERM (Department of Environment and Resource Management) worked with Defence and Milsearch to advise on and support the project’s species management plan as well as the site’s general environmental compliance requirements while DEETI oversaw licensing and management of the munitions and the explosive donor charges stored on site.

In terms of scientific support the DSTO (Defence Science and Technology Organisation) operated a portable field laboratory on the site with a full CGMS capability for analysing soil and swab samples and head spacing various waste streams waste while the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Command provided a monitoring team to confirm air quality within and outside of the destruction facility.

For most of these agencies this was a unique opportunity for their operators to engage in a live chemical warfare agent environment and to test and refine their equipment, policies and procedures. At the community level Defence hosted many education and liaison evenings with the public to ensure that their questions were answered and concerns were allayed and also used these opportunities to glean some valuable local knowledge regarding the operation of the site during the 1940s.

The nature of the job, the number of interested parties and the high level of interest from both within Defence and without, has put the Columboola project under considerable scrutiny. Fortunately, with the assistance of a great many number of cooperative and focused individuals, the destruction operation was completed on time and on budget without a single safety or environmental incident.

Investigation Work

Operating concurrently with the primary objective of destroying the discovered munitions under Australia’s obligations to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Milsearch was also engaged to investigate the remainder of the site to determine if any additional munitions still remained hidden under the paddocks at the Columboola site.

One thing that can be said with absolute certainty when an open-cut coal mine is proposing to move onto your property is that they will find, in this case to a depth of 26 metres, exactly what lies beneath the ground.When this includes aged chemical weapons then it is prudent to take a proactive approach. To this end Defence instructed Milsearch to investigate the entire 730 hectares that constitutes the old US Army base.

In the 65 years since the site was last used as a munitions storage base there has been considerable re-growth of trees and many of the prominent features from the war nowadays only exist as light and subtle shadows on the landscape. To bring together the various sources of information that might cast some light on the location of munitions left on the site during the war a probabilistic analysis model was adopted that sought to collate the body of disparate data that exists about the site.

This strategy involved the use of different tools which were available:

• Desktop photographic review
• Historical study
• Micro-characterisation of the site
• ‘Union Jack’ assessment of site
• Record of tangible points of interest

To allow the management of such a relatively large parcel of land the site was broken into 4ha blocks and a rating was given to each block to prioritise those areas that would receive further intrusive investigation operations. Milsearch are now progressively working through these areas in a three-stage process to determine if any munitions reside beneath the surface. The first stage of works involves the clearing of surface vegetation under the site’s Species Management Plan. Larger trees (those greater than 400mm in diameter) are left in situ while smaller trees are mulched for soil stability and water retention or stockpiled for later provision of habitat sites.

Following de-vegetation the surface is surveyed using a specialised electro-magnetic investigative tool (Geonics EM61). The EM61 time domain metal detectors are able to detect and differentiate between ferrousand non-ferrous metals. Using this system a powerful transmitter generates a pulsed primary magnetic field in the earth that induces eddy currents in nearby metallic objects. The eddy current decay produces a secondary magnetic field measured by the receiver coil. Using this technique we are provided an accurate indication of any sub-surface metallic content.

Peter Murphy is Project Manager of the Columboola Chemical Munitions Destruction Project and Managing Director of OPEC Systems

For further information, go to www.milsearch.com.au and www.opecsystems.com.au
 

Welcome to the March edition of the International Fire Protection Magazine's monthly e-news bulletin. This news service brings you the latest fire news and technology based product information from around the world. We hope you enjoy our news service. If you have any comments or information you would like us to include in future newsletters please contact Dave Staddon at dave.staddon@ifpmag.com 

Welcome to the March edition of the International Fire Fighter Magazine's monthly e-news bulletin. This news service brings you March's latest fire news and technology based product information from around the world. We hope you enjoy our news service. If you have any comments or information you would like us to include in future newsletters please contact Mark Bathard at mark.bathard@iffmag.com