Archive for the ‘Incident Investigation’ Category

Exploding Concrete

Monday, February 1st, 2010

I recently came across a very interesting incident involving foam concrete. Foam concrete is produced by mechanical mixing of foam prepared in advance with concrete mixture, and not with the help of chemical reactions. At the incident site, two workers were removing steelwork using angle grinders while the foam concrete was ...

Biodiesel Incidents Trend

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Based on incident data in biodiesel facilities, I had written that the biodiesel industry in the US is experiencing an incident every two-and-a-half months, i.e. approx. 10 weeks. Here are incidents following my May 2009 blog post on biodiesel incident frequency. 1.       15 July 2009, Chicago: An explosion at a biodiesel plant ...

Did Trees Contribute To Buncefield Explosions?

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Recently, Erik, a reader of this blog directed me to a video his firm has created that explains the role of trees leading to the Buncefield explosion. Remember the Buncefield incident occurred in oil storage and transport depot. Thus the fuel involved was liquid hydrocarbon. The most probable outcome of a ...

History Repeats Itself: Buncefield, Puerto Rico, Jaipur

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

In December 2005, fire and explosion at Buncefield oil storage depot injured 40 people. Overfilling of a fuel storage tank (Tank 912) led to release of unleaded gasoline (petrol) which formed a cloud of flammable vapor that subsequently ignited.  Puerto Rico Fire Four years after Buncefield, around midnight on October 23, 2009, a ...

GAO: CSB Not Meeting Its Statutory Mandates

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

According to a recent report (Aug. 2008) from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is not in compliance with its statutory mandates.  The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents and has been in operation since 1998. GAO report states that ...

1944 Cleveland LNG Incident: Lessons Learnt

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

An explosion occurred at East Ohio Company’s peak-shaving plant in Cleveland, Ohio on October 20, 1944. 128 people were killed and 225 injured as a result of the incident. East Ohio Company built a LNG peak-shaving facility in Cleveland in 1941 to augment the gas supply. In 1943, a cylindrical storage ...