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Risk Assessments-How risk assessments aid in the prevention of catastrophic industrial fires and explosions.
- 1. How they aid in the prevention of catastrophic industrial fires and explosions Ryan Green 3 March 2017
- 2. Objectives Rational Purpose of a risk assessment Advantages of a Risk assessment How to conduct a risk assessment Who should be involved in the risk assessment and their roles How risk assessments could have prevented past losses 2005 Texas City Plant explosion 2010 Deep Water Horizon explosion How a risk assessment can prevent future disasters
- 3. Rational
- 4. Purpose of a Risk Assessment What can go wrong that could lead to an exposure or hazard? How likely is it to happen? If it happens, what are the consequences?
- 5. Advantages of a Risk Assessment Identifies fire, explosion, and other safety hazards that could lead to injury or loss of life. Quantifies the risk. Develops, evaluates, and prioritizes prevention, and protection strategies. Measures the effectiveness of the strategies. Maximizes production by developing a safety culture and increasing moral. Decreases costs due to loss of property and production, law suits, and high insurance premiums.
- 6. Who Should be Involved, and Their Rolls Safety committee: Employees, managers, safety, and maintenance Risk management consultant Fire protection engineer Fire inspector and local fire department
- 7. How to Conduct a Risk Assessment Risk Management Risk Evaluation Determine Consequences Quantify Scenarios Develop Event Trees Develop Initiating Events for Scenarios Define System Define Objectives
- 8. How Risk Assessments Could Have Prevented Past Losses 2005 Texas City Plant Explosion
- 9. 2005 Texas City Plant Explosion Years of cost-cutting, poor worker training and a seriously deficient safety culture left the plant vulnerable to catastrophe. Through three decades, over forty workers have been killed at the Texas City Refinery. Investigations after the 2005 explosion found while there had been an emphasis on personal safety, there was a gaping deficiency in process safety (Elkind, Whitford, and Burke, 2011). The Texas City disaster was caused by organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation. The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board also found that BP executives made spending cuts without assessing the safety impact of those decisions. Following a formalized risk assessment, could have prevented the disaster by identifying hazards, quantifying the risk, and developing prevention, and protection strategies.
- 10. How this Program Could have Affected Past Losses 2010 Deep Water Horizon
- 11. 2010 Deep Water Horizon According to the Deep Water Horizon Final Report "This disaster was preventable if existing progressive guidelines and practices been followed", but BP “Did not possess a functional safety culture.” “As a result of a cascade of deeply flawed failure and signal analysis, decision-making, communication, and organizational - managerial processes, safety was compromised to the point that the blowout occurred with catastrophic effects.” This disaster could have been prevented by early detection and elimination of hazards and their inherent risks, through risk assessment methods.
- 12. How A Risk Assessment can Prevent Future Disasters Risk assessments prevent the normalization of hazards and misperceptions of their risks by quantifying the risk and determining their consequences. Risk assessments can help an organization identify and correct hazards and substandard work practices before a catastrophic event happens. Risk assessments reduce injury, loss of life, and loss of property by identifying, mitigating, and eliminating hazards.
- 14. References Bukowski (2014). Effective safety committees. Retrieved January 28, 2016, from http://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/print/10413- effective-safety-committees H., & Janicak, C. A. (2015). Fundamentals of fire protection for the safety professional (Second ed.). London: Bernan Press. International Fire Service Training Association (2008). Essential of firefighting (fifth ed.) Oklahoma: The Board of Regents Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2012). BP Texas City Violations and Settlement Agreements. Retrieved January 30, 2016 from https://www.osha.gov/dep/bp/bp.html Hyden, T (2011). Risk Management: Planning to avoid losses Retrieved January 20, 2016 from http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/print/volume-164/issue-10/features/risk-management-planning-to-avoid-losses.html Campbell, R (2016). Fire in Industrial or manufacturing properties. National Fire Protection Association. On Scene Coordinator Report Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill September 2011. Retrieved from http://www.uscg.mil/foia/docs/dwh/fosc_dwh_report.pdf Bryant B, (2011). Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf oil spill - the key questions answered. The Guardian. Retrieved from Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf oil spill - the key questions answered Elkind P., Whitford D., and Burke D., (2011). BP An accident waiting to happen. Furtune.com. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2011/01/24/bp-an-accident-waiting-to-happen/ Malewitz J., Collette M., and Olsen L., (2015) Anatomy of disaster. Studies pinpointed what went wrong in Texas City, but unsafe conditions persist. Texas Tribune. Retrieved from https://apps.texastribune.org/blood-lessons/disaster/ United States Chemical Safety Board, (2007). U.S. Chemical Safety Board concludes "organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP corporation" caused march 2005 Texas City disaster that killed 15, injured 180. Retrieved from http://www.csb.gov/u-s-chemical-safety-board-concludes-organizational-and-safety-deficiencies-at-all- levels-of-the-bp-corporation- caused-march-2005-texas-city-disaster-that-killed-15-injured-180/ United States Chemical Safety Board, (2007) Investigation report. Refinery explosion and fire final investigation report. Report number 2005-04-I-TX
Editor's Notes
- NFPA Research indicates: U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 37,000 fires at industrial or manufacturing properties each year, with annual losses from these fires estimated at 18 civilian deaths, 279 civilian injures, and $1 billion in direct property damage. Structure fires accounted for 20% of the fires, but 47% of civilian deaths, 82% of civilian injuries, and 69% of direct property damage. Heating equipment (14% of total) and shop tools and industrial equipment (also 14% of total) were the leading causes of structure fires in industrial or manufacturing facilities. A mechanical failure or malfunction was a factor contributing to the ignition of one in four structure fires (24%) in industrial or manufacturing properties, accounting for 23% of civilian injuries and 21% of direct property damage.
- An organization is responsible for identifying hazards, and the risks involved, and communicating them with employees. Fire risk assessment is an important step in a safety management program as it provides the organization with a clear picture of what risk the facility is exposed to
- Within an industrial work place, a well formed safety committee should be involved in a comprehensive risk assessment. Additionally, a local fire inspector and fire department, a risk management consultant, and/or a fire protection engineer may be involved. A safety committee should be involved as they are in the front lines of overall safety within their industry. A well-formed safety committee should have a high percentage of its work force, hourly workers, and managers. Front-line workers should be in a safety committee because have the most experience with how a task is performed every day and can help identify fire hazards that managers may overlook. The frontline employees are key components to identifying potential and even hidden fire hazards and communicating them to management. Additionally, an experienced and enthusiastic employee can quantify the probability of the occurrence of a fire. He can draw off of his experience the potential consequences of not mitigating the risk. The managers in the safety committee meetings are excellent resources as well, and should provide strong support to the safety committee. A manager may have the experience of creating a risk assessment or writing strategic plans. Furthermore, a manager may have spent a great amount of time as a frontline employee, and could possibly identify the risks that even an experienced employee would miss. This is because an employee often becomes complacent in their work areas, and sometimes fails to identify significant risks. A new set of eyes, with years of experience would easier identify the risks. Managers, along with, safety consultants, an/or fire protection engineers would be the best resources for developing and evaluating alternative prevention and protection strategies, as well as measuring the results to determine the effectiveness. The right consultant can recommend fire prevention and protection strategies, manage safety committee meetings, prepare plans, and draw maps, and assist in determining the effectiveness. A fire protection engineer is a valuable resource in developing protection and prevention engineering controls. Lastly, the local fire department is a vital tool to a comprehensive risk assessment, especially in determining how effective a plan will be. In some jurisdictions, a firefighter can complete an inspection to determine if the fire risk assessment is appropriate and adequate. They can also ensure compliance with fire and building codes. More importantly, firefighters can conduct property fire safety and pre-incident surveys, as they are the subject matter experts. They may help identify building strengths, weaknesses, avenues of fire spread, important features within the building that may inhibit or promote fire spread, and building construction techniques. Additionally, they can become familiarized with the lay out of the building, and manufacturing process. These surveys can help a risk assessment by providing information to minimize the deficiencies, and maximize the strengths.
- Define the assessment objectives: Clearly state objective, scope, purpose, and damage states that are of interest. Apply risk perception concerns. Define the system: Understand the human-machine interfaces, the environmental conditions, the operating conditions, the mechanical and electrical designs, and other important aspects. Develop event scenarios: Use a hazard analysis to identify the events that present the hazards of most concern. A fault tree can refine how the event could occur, and a FMEA can give specific failure information about particular components that led to that event. Develop Event Trees: Functional event trees can be developed that describes these hazard event scenarios. The Event trees show the relationship between the initiation of the event and the hazard controls that must be challenged. Quantify Scenarios: Calculate the failure probability of each event. Determine Consequences: Cost benefit analysis, number of people injured or killed, environmental impact, or loss of productivity. Risk Evaluation: Calculate risk and what scenarios are riskier. Risk Management: Systematically decide how to disposition the risks that have been identified in the risk assessment.
- At approximately 1:20 p.m. on March 23, 2005, a series of explosions demolished the BP Texas City refinery. The explosions occurred during the restarting of a hydrocarbon iso meri zation unit, when a distillation tower flooded with hydrocarbons become over pressurized, causing a geyser-like release from the vent stack (U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, 2007). A spark from an idling truck nearby triggered the explosion, killing fifteen and injuring 180 people.
- In 2008, BP reported in a strategy document, “that process-safety major hazards and risks are not fully understood by engineering or line operating personnel. Insufficient awareness is leading to missed signals that precede incidents and response after incidents, both of which increases the potential for and severity of process-safety related incidents.” This lead to the creation of an Operating Management System to integrate safety into the company and correct deficiencies. Unfortunately this plan took years to accomplish, and was extremely difficult to gain the buy in of management and employees. In 2009, OSHA issued violations to BP for failure to abate hazards in Texas City, and added on hundreds of new “willful” violations, totaling 829 violations (Elkind, 2011). This made it clear that BP had not yet made the progress in system safety that was needed. In 2010, BP’s largest catastrophe devastated the Gulf Coast when their oil rig, Deep Water Horizon exploded, killing eleven people, and spilling 210 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Although there were several human factors and hundreds of safety errors involved, British Petrolium’s post incident fault tree found that: Well integrity was not established or failed; Hydrocarbons entered the well undetected and well control was lost; Hydrocarbons ignited on the Deep Water Horizon; And the blowout preventer failed.