Buncefield Explosion

[Gel]

I live 53 miles from Buncefield {Herts} but still clearly heard the explosion this morning.

See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4517962.stm

[TallyHo]

One person interviewed on the phone reported an initial small explosion followed immediately by a larger one; then three more large ones after that.

[ian gough]

Gel, your post explains the 'bump' I heard in Northampton!

[stevfire2]

i didnt listen to any radio or tv till 6 tonight when i heard about this. that explains the bedroom doors rattling at 6 am and waking up my mum and wife! we also wondered why it was gloomy when we drove into high wycombe.
methinks plenty of foam needed for this one.

[AnthonyB]

methinks plenty of foam needed for this one.

Well Kidde PLC will certainly be happy - they own two of the leading foam manufacturers: Kerr (Centrifoam, Filmfoam, etc) & Angus (Petroseal, Alcoseal, FP70, etc)

It should be a good test of Mutual Aid - as I understand it the foam manufacturers and the large user sites have an agreement for emergency concentrate supply between each other.

 Iwonder if there are any similarities to the Flixborough Disaster?

[messy]

we also wondered why it was gloomy when we drove into high wycombe.
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I always feel gloomy when I drive into High Wycombe, but strangely never when I leave

[TallyHo]

This is a post left on the Petrochemical section from May 04

The guy is talking about industrial fire fighting teams.
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We are the forgotten, under-funded poor relation in fire fighting. The government and HSE, never include us in any thinking on up grading work practices, why?

Our training courses are often short, and limited to the bare minimum. This is not due to training establishments, not being able to deliver, because the government don’t set standards. So the companies ask the courses to be short and infrequent.

Refresher courses can be as much as 5 years apart, depending on the company you work for. More and more industries are moving over to using so called part time emergency responders from the work force. Multi-national companies, who want to save a few hundred thousand and the first thing to get looked at for the chop, are the sites full time emergency service.

The accounts mind:

“I know how to save money, get rid of the whole time fire dept, send some of the work force on a one week fire course” Call them an emergency response set up and we are covered. Pay them a minor retaining fee and if able to do so, they can train together a few times a year”

The people recruited, do so with the best intentions, and may even have to volunteer to secure their job. Invariably, they always are useless. If they turned the tables and we took over their work area. Would any company say you are competent with a week’s course?  

I know from experience, these teams are dangerous, because they think they know what their doing. If you took anyone of them aside and gave them practical or written tests, you would be horrified at their lack of job knowledge.  It is common sense, if people are not properly trained and competent they are unsafe.

It sickens me to know we are being eroded and yet nobody in any sort of position of authority is monitoring and finding out why this is going on. The law of averages will catch up, and eventually a fire-incident will occur and these so-called emergency responders will get themselves or those they are there to assist, seriously injured or even killed.

You can hear the enquiry, detailing the inept approach of the company involved in their attitude towards a competent, emergency response department. When are the government and HSE you going to wake up and get to grips with this?
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I bet there are few industial companies out there reviewing their emergency response procedures at the moment.

[messy]

methinks plenty of foam needed for this one.

Well Kidde PLC will certainly be happy - they own two of the leading foam manufacturers: Kerr (Centrifoam, Filmfoam, etc) & Angus (Petroseal, Alcoseal, FP70, etc)

It should be a good test of Mutual Aid - as I understand it the foam manufacturers and the large user sites have an agreement for emergency concentrate supply between each other.

 Iwonder if there are any similarities to the Flixborough Disaster?

Any idea the current price of foam concentrate??

[Big A]

No, but you probably get a discount on 500,000 litres.

[stevfire2]

we are currently paying, i think, £2.20 per lt for 3%afff, and in reply to messy, i know exactly what you mean my friend!

[Gel]

Picture array here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4526352.stm

[messy]

Hertfordshire Police have today admitted that George Best was not in fact buried in Belfast last week, and that in retrospect the decision to cremate him in Hemel Hempstead on Sunday morning may have been a mistake.

[chris]

The HSE has already been in contact with COMAH sites asking what their plans are to deal with multi-tank fires, but the truth is firms only practice for fires involving a single tank. It’s all down to resources; a large crude oil full surface tank fire, would require more foam cannons than many COMAH sites would have.

If they did have ten plus slim jets, and associated fire hose, they would not have the man-power to set-up the equipment. When it comes to COMAH or high-risk sites, where an in-house emergency response set-up is in place, there are no concrete guidelines on manning levels; therefore this is kept to the bare minimum.

Some sites have first aid fire fighting responders, who come from the manning levels on the site, trouble is if there is an incident on the site, they cannot be released because there dealing their core job first. Can you imagine having fire teams made up from the control room staff at an airport, they have to make their own job safe i.e. land the plane and then run off kit up and go and fight the fire? Yet in large industries and COMAH sites that is often the norm, maybe this weeks events will wake someone up.  

If nothing else, the fire this week is a testament to cooperation between county fire service and private industry fire fighters. The mutual aid appears to have worked very well, even though nothing is written down between private industry and the local fire authorities. I hope the mutual respect between both parties is not lost or forgotten in the future.

[Allen Higginson]

Hertfordshire Police have today admitted that George Best was not in fact buried in Belfast last week, and that in retrospect the decision to cremate him in Hemel Hempstead on Sunday morning may have been a mistake.

Did you make that up all by yourself??

[dave bev]

the hse require comah sites (top tier) to produce onsite plans and the local authority to produce off site plans based on a reasoned 'worse case scenario' - so it hinges on what 'worse case scenario' is determined. im not going to go into the politics of the buncefield incident as there is enough going on in that arena already (some would even say too much!) - i am thankful that no lives were lost and perhaps one of the real issues relates to planning consents in terms of taking the worst case scenario and ensuring that 'new' sites with the potential to cause damage off site should be isolated from other premises? there then becomes a potential for applying retrospective restrictions in terms of quantities/types of product to ensure the safety of other premises(and more inportantly people) in the proximity.

i hope the hse are looking at themselves and their policies/legislation in as great a detail as uk fire plc is looking at itself! we need to concentrate on preventing and limiting incidents with this potential in the first place, not beat ourselves up over the emergency phase

dave bev