Industrial Fire World Magazine

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Industrial Fire World

Responders attend IFW international expo

UNITED AGAINST

FIRE P.O. BOX 9161, COLLEGE STATION, TX 77842

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a e: s b u s r is e e his ond laz t b n o i e s p nel s l r A s n

Volume

24,

No.

3

May-June

2009

u e l e ial t g A n ustr s L o ind

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INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD EMERGENCY RESPONDER CONFERENCE & EXPO February 22 - 26, 2010 Crowne Plaza Hotel Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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IFW CONTENTS

DEPARTMENTS

10: COVER STORY

UNITED AGAINST FIRE

4: Dave’s Notes

By David White A slumping economy has made technological advances such as large diameter hose even more important to industrial firefighters.

COVER SHOT: Firefighters apply PKW dry chemical to an LNG live-fire demonstration conducted at the BEST fire training complex during the IFW Conference & Expo in Beaumont, TX. Photo by Anton Riecher

23: Industry News 24: Incident Log

Industrial emergency responders worldwide gathered in Beaumont, TX, in March to exchange opinions, ideas and information during the 24th annual Industrial Fire World Emergency Responder Conference & Exposition.

6: Fire on the Water The Coast Guard issues important new rule changes regarding marine fire fighting and American ports.

14: Tunnel Vision A fire in a petroleum coke tunnel at a Los Angeles refinery threatens a commercial rail corridor overhead.

18: Cheese Melt CAFS gave Vermont firefighters an early jump on a cheese factory fire that threatened local jobs.

20: Penetrating the Darkness CAFS married with nitrogen helped Publisher David White Editor Anton Riecher Circulation Manager Gloria Thompson Marketing Manager Lynn White Associate Editor Kendra Graf

MAY-JUNE 2009 Volume 24 Number 3

helped bring a coal mine fire in Virginia under control.

31: EMS Corner

By Bill Kerney “Management of EMS” is a much needed book as a resource for managers shapening their skills.

22: Thermal Performance DuPont introduces a new thermal liner technology that is activated by rising temperatures.

32: Risk Assessment

By Peter Willse Exterior insulation and finishing systems may be taking a bad rap from fire fighters around the world.

23: Aerial Ladder Warning Investigation suggests that some aerial ladder designs do not provide secondary stops for the waterway.

34: Focus on Hazmat

By John Townsend The road to developing fire foams has been long and complicated.

25: Inferno at Tacoa A December 1982 fire disaster in Venezuela holds the record for people killed in a crude oil boilover.

36: Industrial Service Directory

Technical Consultant Louis N. Molino, Sr. Hazmat Contributor John S. Townsend, Ph.D. EMS Contributor Bill Kerney Education Contributor Attila Hertelendy Risk Contributor John A. Frank

38: Spotlight Ads

INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD® SINCE 1985

(ISSN 0749-890X) P.O. Box 9161/540 Graham Rd. College Station, TX 77842/45 (979)690-7559 FAX (979)690-7562 E-MAIL ind@fireworld.com WEB SITE www.fireworld.com

Industrial Fire World, May-June 2009, Volume 24, No. 3. Industrial Fire World (ISSN 0749-890X) is published bimonthly by Industrial Fire World, Inc., P.O. Box 9161, College Station, Texas 77842. (979) 690-7559. Fax: (979) 6907562. E-mail: ind@fireworld.com. All rights reserved under International Convention. Copyright © 2009 by Industrial Fire World Inc., all rights reserved. Industrial Fire World is a registered trademark of David White Investments, Inc., College Station, Texas. The design and content are fully protected by copyright and must not be reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Bulk rate postage paid at Fulton, MO, and additional mailing offices.

Subscription rates: USA, one year $29.95, two years $49.95, and three years $59.95; Canada and foreign, add $20 per year postage. Single copies $6. Back issues available at $6 a copy plus postage. Payment must accompany orders for single copies. All inquiries regarding subscription problems, change of address and payments, call (979) 690-7559. Please allow six to eight weeks for your first subscription copy to be shipped. Please state both old and new addresses when requesting an address change and notify us at least six weeks in advance. (If possible enclose subscription address label.) Industrial Fire World is edited exclusively to be of value for people in the industrial fire protection field.

Subscriptions are reserved to those engaged in the area of industrial fire protection and related fields or service and supply companies’ personnel. Address advertising requests to Marketing Director, Industrial Fire World, P.O. Box 9161, College Station, Texas 77842. (979) 690-7559. Advertising rates and requirements available on request. Editorial Information: Industrial Fire World welcomes correspondence dealing with industrial fire and safety issues, products, training and other information that will advance the quality and effectiveness of industrial fire and safety management. We will consider for publication all submitted manuscripts and photographs. All material will be treated with care, although we cannot be responsible for loss or damage. Submissions should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. (Any payment for use of material will be made only upon publication.) Industrial Fire World assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Industrial Fire World reserves the right to refuse any editorial or advertising material submitted for publication. Information and recommendations contained in this publication have been compiled from sources that are believed to be reliable and representative of the best current opinion on various topics. No warranty, guarantee, or representation is made by Industrial Fire World as to the absolute validity of sufficiency of information contained within the publication. Industrial Fire World assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors. Advertising in Industrial Fire World does not imply approval nor endorsement by Industrial Fire World.

Printed in the USA. CPC publication number 40801529. Postmaster: Send address changes to Industrial Fire World, P.O. Box 9161, College Station, Texas 77842. For subscription inquiries call: (979) 690-7559.

MAY-JUNE 2009

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DAVE’S NOTES

Large-diameter fire hose’s legacy

By DAVID WHITE

Y

es, the economy is contracting.

Factory orders continue to fall.

Companies are slashing output to curb inventory. That, together with declines in business investment, continues to drag down the gross domestic product. Industrial emergency responders once again face the painful question of how to do the same job with less money, people and resources.

The question is hardly a new one. Fire chiefs, emergency response and HSSE managers in plants and refineries have been making do with less and less for decades.

Downsizing in industry, at least some industries, has been a painful fact of life.

While payrolls shrank, the risks stayed the same – hazardous materials in huge volumes waiting to escape or combust.

Technology creates problems. And, if managed correctly, technology can help cope with those problems. A fire chief is faced with the problem of moving 10,000 gallons per minute of water from Point A to Point B. The plant’s fire water system will only move 2,000 gpm. On anybody’s calculator, the chief is short 8,000 gpm. He has two choices. One, let Point B burn down.

Management likely will not view this in a favorable light. Or, two, employ proven technology to supplement the fire water system and attack the fire.

As a small town firefighter in the 1960s, I remember the jaw dropping awe of upgrading from 2½–inch hose to three-inch hose. Suddenly, instead of 250 gpm you could move 500 gpm and even use the same couplings. Then those crazy people that eventually get to be known as visionaries started talking about hose even bigger than three inch. One visionary was Chief Henry D. Smith who led the Texas Engineering Extension Service’s former fire protection training division from 1957 to 1986.

I went to work for Chief Smith at Texas A&M University in the 1970s when he first attempted to introduce this new technology.

He had the money to buy a pumper for the fire school. He chose one that had six-inch intakes and a six-inch discharge. Outside the famous New York City Superpumper, nobody had a six-inch discharge. Chief 4

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Smith’s pumper had a 1,250 gpm pump.

Thanks to the pipe configuration and large discharge, it was able to draft 2,200 gpm. It was quite an accomplishment in its time.

Chief Smith also bought six-inch hose for the pumper, complete with this new fangled coupling called Stortz. Now all you needed to move about 3,000 gpm from Point A to Point B was one hose. Still, large-diameter hose was a hard sell. Municipal fire departments that often operated without a ready supply of water were more likely to invest in it than industrial firefighters who always had a fire hydrant within easy reach.

Then, in October 1989, a massive chemical complex in Pasadena, TX, exploded.

Houston’s Channel Industry Mutual Aid, the world’s largest mutual aid organization, found itself facing the worst industrial disaster since Texas City in 1947 and no water to fight the fire. The explosion had sheared away the hydrants at ground level.

The only recourse was large-diameter hose to bring water in from the Houston Ship Channel and other locations. I was teaching a safety class at a neighboring plant the day of the explosion. Working with a CIMA liaison, my job became tracking down all the large-diameter hose within a 100 mile radius.

After the Pasadena fire, large diameter took off like a mad bat. From five- and six-inch, we progressed to 7¼ inch, eight inch, 10 inch and, today, we have adapted 12 inch as the unofficial minimum standard. Large-diameter hose has proven to be a very efficient method of delivering water in large quantities. If you have not availed yourself of this technology, the question is “Why not?” See those who out it to good use. Then make your decision.

Now ask yourself, what other innovation technologies am I overlooking. This issue describes how CAFS are being used in industrial fire situations to put some fires out faster with less runoff and other environmental impacts. At the 2009 IFW conference we saw new breathing apparatus, video technology for tracking fires and vapor changes and hearing protection for emergency workers, to name a few.

Plan now for the 25th IFW Conference, Feb. 23-26, 2010, in Baton Rouge to keep pace with innovations affecting your world. C

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Firefighters keep water flowing on a burning tanker.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard

Coast Guard revises marine fire fighting regulations

Fire on the Water O

n June 1, 2010, marine fire fighting across the U.S. will experience a revolution. Under important new rule changes issued by the Coast Guard, all tank vessels carrying oil in U.S. waters must identify appropriate marine fire fighting resources in their vessel response plans as required under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90).

The Salvage and Marine Firefighting Requirements, Vessel Response Plans, (33 CFR Part 155) final rule affects all U.S. and foreign tank vessels carrying oil on U.S. waters. Such tank vessels are required to have a vessel response plan. The changes included in the rule clarify the salvage and marine fire fighting services that must be identified in a response plan; establish criteria for vetting salvage and marine fire fighting service providers; and set new response-time planning standards for each of the required salvage and marine fire fighting services.

The changes incorporated by reference National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards; require information in the response plan be consistent with applicable area contingency plans and the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Contingency Plan; and require adding a section on drills and exercises to highlight that salvage and marine firefighting components are part of the existing requirements for vessels holding vessel response plans.

These changes ensure that appropriate salvage and marine fire fighting resources are identified in response plans and are

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available for responding to incidents up to and including the plan’s worst-case discharge scenario.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Allain serves as vessel response plan program manager with pervue over response plans derived from OPA 90. Industrial Fire World publisher David White interviewed Allain regarding the new salvage and marine fire fighting regulations.

DW: Is there any room to change anything in the rule or is it pretty well in concrete?

RA: It’s in concrete. The time for providing input to the rule was when it was published as a proposal. That was back in 2002.

After it was published, there was a comment period. Over the past six years, the Coast Guard sifted through those comments.

We responded to them when we published the final rule (on Jan. 1, 2009).

DW: Do you think it’s fair that six years ago we had the public comments and now we’re going to put it into effect?

RA: That’s something I really can’t comment on.

DW: I’ve been in the fire business longer than I want to admit.

I’ve been to two major ship fires. Successfully put out one; the other one we watched it burn out. I understand the total need for

this because ports are basically protected by municipal fire departments. They may have a fire boat or two but all they typically do is throw water on it or sometimes a little foam. In too many cases they sink the ship and create a bigger problem than they had when they started. This new rule addresses the issue of a fire at the dock, in the channel and out in the open sea up to 200 miles. Is that correct?

RA: Actually, no. In most cases the rule only applies to 50 miles offshore.

DW: Here is my beef about so many things we regulate. I have no problem with having quality trained and properly equipped groups to do this job of fighting fire. I know you have an exercise once a year to basically prove the responders can do what is needed. Is there a document on how we are going to grade that exercise?

RA: That’s a document that we are currently working on. We’re working really hard to get a completed draft in the next month or so. Once we get the draft completed we’re going to post it on the public docket so that the public is going to have a chance to look at it. This summer we are planning to have a public meeting at Coast Guard headquarters. We’re going to make the document public about 60 days prior to that public meeting. Hopefully industry and any other folks can come and give us their comments to take under advisement. Because it is a Coast Guard policy document, we’re not obligated to make any requested changes but we will take those under advisement.

DW: Now, the ship is the responsible party to have this plan?

RA: That’s correct.

DW: Okay, I’m a ship owner and I have numerous ships that call at different ports in the United States. I have to have a plan that would show how every single one of my ships would be taken care of if it called at the Port of Houston, Seattle, Chicago or whatever?

RA: That’s correct. But there are various ways you can meet that requirement. I would think that would be handled the way that vessel response plans are currently drafted. If you’re a ship fleet owner, you have a fleet plan that covers all your ships – basically a template. Then any time there is an individual difference between the ships, it is specified in there. Each plan has a vessel specific appendage that becomes part of the fleet plan. If you have a fleet of 100 ships, your one fleet plan is going to get approved for that 100 vessel fleet. Then, contained within that plan, is an appendix for each vessel that has the particulars of each ship.

DW: Here’s where it gets really confusing. Every year I have to have a full scale drill. If I have 100 ships that go to Houston, do I have to have 100 drills or can I have one drill that covers all those ships?

RA: You’re going to be able to have one drill.

DW: How many ports will this cover?

RA: Every captain of the port zone in the United States. (In the United States of America, Captain of the Port (COTP) is a title

held by the commander of a Coast Guard sector, usually a person with the rank of Captain. Captain of the Port duties involve enforcing within their respective areas port safety and security and marine environmental protection regulations.)

DW: Doesn’t this also cover barges that are carrying the right kind of fuel?

RA: That’s correct. It covers tank barges that are carrying any amount of OPA 90 regulated cargo.

DW: Does that mean all the way up the Mississippi and the Ohio and everywhere else?

RA: That’s correct.

DW: There’s going to be a lot of fire fighting stuff bought isn’t there.

RA: If you go through the public comments, the regulatory development team put out a survey a couple of years ago to assess the resources available to support this regulation. Based on the survey responses, we had an indication of what resources are out there. We actually spell that out if you look at that whole regulatory package.

DW: I won’t get into the issue of if they are qualified. That’s up to you guys.

RA: Actually, the qualification part of it is up to the owner and operator. It is incumbent upon the person who owns the plan to make sure the resource providers are adequate.

DW: So much fire protection in my world is usually paper products. I call them compliance plans, not based on reality.

RA: If you look in the regulation, there is a whole section that talks about the resource providers. There are 15 elements that the resource provider should meet. That section starts out by saying that you, as the owner-operator, are to insure that the resource provider meets as many of those 15 elements as possible.

It is really incumbent upon the owner-operator, not the Coast Guard or other federal agency, to make sure that whatever resource provider named in your plan meets the standards.

DW: Now, let’s say you’ve named the David White fire equipment company in Houston. Let’s say I put together the pumps, foam, nozzles and whatever else you need. And in two or three years from now none of my pumps will start, there is nobody to maintain them, so on and so forth. Are you guys going to go through periodically and do an audit, or are you going to let this annual drill be the audit?

RA: It is the intent of our program to do verifications. How we set up that verification program will probably be similar to what we have had in place for the vessel response program close to 15 years now. Sometimes we will do random verification. Sometimes we’ll send out a request for a provider to submit an equipment list and then we will request our local captain of the port to verify the equipment.

DW: Could a municipal fire department, say like the city of MAY-JUNE 2009 7

Coast Guard, tugboats and fireboats attempt to extinguish a fire that engulfed the Swedish tanker Mega Borg after it exploded 60 miles southeast of Galveston, TX, in June 2002.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard

Houston, contract with ships and be the fire fighting provider?

RA: That’s correct. That’s provided for in the regulation.

DW: I want to compliment the Coast Guard. I think you did a nice job with a real challenging issue. As a guy who has been to ship fires, I know some of the challenges, and many people are not ready for them. Here is a real tough question. You say I have to meet the NFPA standard for marine firefighter. Okay. In most cases where it is a standard for firefighters there is a professional Pro Board certificate that you get after completing the training related to that standard. Are you going to require that the ProBoard certificate be issued or just a statement that I’ve had the required training?

RA: We are not going to ask for anything unless we conduct some type of verification. At the initial submission for the approval of a plan, we’re taking the owner’s certification. They are going to have to certify that their submission meets what is spelled out in the regulations. So the owner is certifying that their plan submission meets everything in 33 CFR 155.1010 through 4070. If in two or three months we want to do a random verification, we may ask that plan submitter, that owner-operator, to tell us how they chose their marine fire fighting resource provider, based on what qualification. Then it is going to be up to them to provide the evidence for why they chose Smith Fire Fighting Company over Brown Fire Fighting Company. They are going to have to say, “Here are their qualifications. Here is the training program.”

DW: So you’re not saying that it’s required to meet the professional qualifications training, but it could be used to verify training, correct? My concern is the regulation is referencing NFPA standards related to marine fire fighting. Fine. In some people’s eyes, to meet that NFPA standard you have to have the training by a certified agency as per NFPA ProBoard. Then the 8 INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

test is taken as per NFPA and then you get a certification that says, “I’m qualified to be a marine fire fighter.” Is that your intent?

RA: The rule states that as the submitter for the vessel owneroperator, you are responsible for determining the adequacy of the resource provider you intend to use in your plan. When determining adequacy of the resource provider, you must select a resource provider that meets the selection criteria to the maximum extent possible.

DW: Here is where the complication comes in. The NFPA ProBoard only allows one agency in a state to be the delivery agency of their programs. There are some very good training groups or companies out there that will not be able to do training if you make the NFPA standard include ProBoard certification.

RA: I discussed this with the regulatory team and there is no requirement for ProBoard certification. Section 4050(b)(6) asks that the resource provider has an ongoing continuous training program that meets the training guidelines in NFPA 1001, 1005, 1021, 1405, and 1561, show equivalent training, or demonstrate qualification through experience.

DW: Changing gears here, when you go into New York Harbor, if there is a ship fire, the Fire Department of New York responds with their fire boats and everything else. My experience with big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago is that if there is a ship fire at the dock or in the channel or harbor, that is their ship fire. In your regulations you say the provider that is going to fight fire has to have an agreement with the local fire authorities.

Who is the referee? Is the Coast Guard going to be the referee if the city fire department says “He’s not fighting my fire” and the fire fighting company says “That guy is fixing to sink my ship.”

RA: First of all, this regulation for salvage marine fire fighting is a planning standard, not an operational standard. It is a planning

document. That’s pretty clear in the preamble to the rule. There is no expectation that the plan is going to be followed exactly. There is an amendment to OPA 90 called the Chaffee Amendment that requires that the vessel response plan to be followed unless the Captain of the Port agrees that following it will hinder the response.

If you go to the person in charge and say, “We have a fire fighting response provider who can reach the fire a lot sooner than a private one,” or vice versa, then the Captain of the Port can give us a waiver under the Chaffee Amendment.

DW: That makes sense. Thank goodness someone in government has given us a little latitude to deviate from something in concrete.

Chemical ships don’t come under this law, right?

RA: That’s correct.

Photo by Michael Anderson

DW: Say I have a chemical ship on fire. If the owner of the ship says “David White, bring your firefighters,” there is nothing that prevents them from fighting the fire.

RA: As far as I know there is nothing.

DW: Because that chemical ship has a plan that includes you as a fire fighting agency, even though that is not required by law.

RA: That’s correct.

DW: The Coast Guard has a requirement that if I use foam on a ship, say a crude oil tanker, it has to be Coast Guard-approved foam. The foam I use as a fire fighting company to fight a ship fire, does that have to be Coast Guard approved?

Petty Officer 2nd Class John Landry, a nozzleman, and Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Aarstad, an attack team leader, prepare to engage a fire during a fire fighting drill conducted onboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf.

RA: I would say that there is nothing in this regulation that specifies that, unless the vessels using the foam are Coast Guardinspected vessels, I don’t think there is anything in this regulation that would prohibit you from using non Coast Guard-approved foam. I think the reason why inspected ships need to have Coast Guard-approved foam is to make sure it is not some type of corrosive that is going to be a problem in the tank or the C surrounding space.

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Counterclockwise from the right, product demonstrations conducted by International Fog, Inc., Roll N Rack and Dr. Sthamer-Hamburg. At bottom, attendees gather in the IFW conference exhibit hall to see other emergency response products on display.

Photos by Anton Riecher

Firefighters gather in Beaumont for 24th annual IFW conference

UNITED AGAINST

FIRE I n March, a violent lightning storm swept through the Beaumont-Port Arthur area in Texas, causing a power outage that triggered a brief flash fire at a local 285,000 bpd refinery.

If those attending the annual Industrial Fire World Emergency Responder Conference & Exposition in Beaumont that same week needed any reminder about their mission, God provided it.

Industrial Fire World chairman David White spoke specifically about that mission in a general session address to the attendees. “Industrial Fire World came about because there was a group of fire people in industry that said it would be great if we could get together and share our information, knowledge and

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At right, starting at the top, John Nimmo receives the Red Adair Award with his wife Karen (Nimmo was unable to accept in person); David White and Joe Gross present Wackenhut’s Chris Frasier with the Joe Gross award (WSI’s Charlene Miller at right); TEEX accepts the Connie award and, bottom, FoamPro’s Chuck Small shows the AccuMax rapid deployment foam system.

experience,” he said. “Because today, like any other day, you never know what’s going to happen.”

With that goal in mind, IFW once again brought together the leading experts and the cutting edge technology that is moving emergency response forward in dealing with the risks that must be safely managed in modern industry.

Leading this year’s agenda were seminars, workshops and live fire demonstrations on subjects as diverse as new fuels such as LNG and ethanol, incident command, tunnel and coal fire incidents, marine fire fighting and water delivery. An exhibit hall filled with products essential for industrial emergencies — electronics, protective clothing, fire fighting foam, training, nozzles — stirred the important exchange of ideas.

Beaumont mayor Becky Ames greeted the attendees during the general session of the third consecutive IFW conference held locally. “It’s always another great day in Beaumont and with you folks here it certainly is,” she said.

Testifying to IFW standing in the industrial fire community worldwide was the winner of the 2009 Red Adair Award, named for the acknowledged master of extinguishing oil well fires. The award was presented to John Nimmo who recently retired after 45 years in the fire service, the last 27 years of which were with BP in ADMA OPCO on DAS Island, Abu Dhabi.

Das Island is the centre of the UAE’s offshore oil industry, lying in the heart of the Arabian Gulf, approximately 140 km northwest of Abu Dhabi. The island serves as the export terminal for ADMA OPCO’s oil from their offshore fields and for liquefied natural gas produced by the Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company (ADGAS), both of which are part of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, ADNOC. During Nimmo’s years at the helm, the $23 billion Das Island facility has never had a major fire it could not deal with, White said.

Ewen Duncan, a section leader on the Das Island brigade, accepted the award for Nimmo, who could not attend.

“During John’s career, he has always endeavored to immulate the following, which has proved to be adventagous over his 27 year career,” Duncan said. “For the successful performance of his duty, a firefighter must value his profession and have a devotion that rises above material rewards.”

Joe Gross of the Roberts Company, celebrating his 90th birthday, attended the conference to personnally present two awards he annually sponsors — the Joe Gross Award and the Connie Award, in honor of his late wife. Representatives of the Texas Engineering Extension Service — Kirk Richardson, program manager for marine fire fighting; Mike Wisby, business development manager and Robert Moore, associate director — were presented with the Joe Gross Award in recognition of TEEX’s work with BP to establish an LNG training and research center at the Texas A&M University fire school.

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At right, Pittsburgh Corning Foamglas is demonstrated at the BEST Complex. On opposite page, top, firefighters line up for free eats courtesy of Munro’s Safety Apparal. At bottom, Stang operates a remote control water delivery device.

“I’m so happy to be here to recognize these people for their leadership in this important area of testing and fire training,” Gross said.

Accepting the Connie Award honoring vision and knowledge in the industrial fire fighting field was Chris Frasier, director of fire and emergency services for WSI, a leading provider of firerescue services. Nearly 1,300 firefighters work for Frasier, including 700 stationed in Iraq to protect military facilities.

“Chief Frasier is the chief’s chief,” Gross said. “Anything you want to know about industrial fire suppression, Chief Frasier knows it.”

Frasier said the award came as a complete surprise. “I’m extremely honored to receive this,” he said.

Filling out the opening day general session were presentation by three notable fire service speakers. Fire protection engineer J. Gordon Routley served as project leader in the post incident

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assessment of the June 2007 Sofa Super Store flashover fire and structural collapse in Charleston, NC, that killed nine firefighters.

“It is important in looking at this to focus on the things that could apply to us in our own environments,” Routley said. The Routley report was blunt in its assessment of the disaster.

“The Charleston Fire Department was inadequately staffed, inadequately trained, insufficiently equipped, and organizationally unprepared to conduct an operation of this complexity in a large commercial occupancy,” the report said.

However, he emphasized to the IFW audience that any fire department is capable of some of the same mistakes made in Charleston.

William B. Wark, a member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, reported on the CSB’s investigation of a massive fire that injured four workers at refinery in Sunray, TX, in February 2007. CSB ruled that the fire likely occurred after water leaked through a valve, froze, and cracked an out-of-service section of piping, causing a high-pressure liquid propane release.

The CSB is an independent government agency modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board. Out of an agency staff of 40, about half are investigators, Wark said.

“What we do is investigate accidents in the chemical industry, determine the root causes and make recommendations,” Wark said. “Our goal is prevention.”

The CSB’s final report concluded the root causes of the Sunray accident were that the refinery did not have an effective program to identify and freeze-protect piping and equipment that was out of service or infrequently used; that the refinery did not apply the company’s policies on emergency isolation valves to control fires; and that current industry and company standards do not recommend sufficient structural steel fireproofing against jet fires.

Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bruce Arvizu reported on a February 2009 fire in a 679-foot tunnel used to move petroleum coke beneath a busy rail corridor. (See page 14 for specific coverage of the fire.) The tunnel ties together a 265,000-barrel per day refinery, among the largest in California.

Splitting the 630-acre refinery is a 20-mile freight expressway known as the Alameda Corridor that links the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the downtown Los Angeles rail network.

Also discussed more extensively (see page 28) is a contingent from Port of Rotterdam investigating crude oil boilovers.

Live fire demonstrations are another important part of the conference schedule. Utilizing the facilities of the Beaumont Emergency Services Training Complex, a two-day liquefied natural gas symposium during the conference concluded with 3,000 gallons of LNG being emptied into a special containment pit. A fire hose stream was used to excite the LNG and increase vaporization. Meanwhile, a firefighter with a road flare on a long pole was dispatched downwind.

Igniting the vapor cloud was not easy, White explained. The visible vapor is far too rich to ignite in most cases. The flammable area extends far beyond the visible vapor but finding it is a process of trial and error. After ignition a 500 to one high expansion foam cover is added to the pit to reduce vaporization. The foam causes the remaining vapors to rise vertically away from ground level ignition sources. PKW, a dry chemical, was used to obtain

rapid knockdown of the flames.

Another live fire demonstration involved Pittsburgh Corning’s Foamglas product. Highly buoyant bags of Foamglas cubes rise immediately to the surface of a shallow LNG pool. With ignition, the cubes are released from the bags and quickly limit thermal radiation and flame height.

German based fire foam manufacturer Dr. Sthamer-Hamburg demonstrated its high performance, low viscosity alcohol resistant AFFF foam known as Moussol APS LV1x1. A shallow pan of ethanol was ignited. Because ethanol is an alcohol it literally eats traditional AFFF fire foam.

However, the Dr. Sthamer foam has an (1x1) induction ratio of one percent for hydrocarbon fuels and one percent polar solvents/alcohols.

An indirect application of the foam to the ethanol fire allowed it to form a polymeric membrane, choking the flames.

Portland, OR, based International Fog demonstrated its rotating piercing nozzle which makes water pressurized from 50 psi to 225 psi disburse into a fine particulate mist. The mist extinguished the fire without pushing flames into important areas.

Inventor Eugene Ivy tested the nozzle against a wood pallet fire, a pool fire and a liquid propane jet fire. Tracking the temperature and fire pattern changes during the fire fighting demonstration was Cochran Fire Safety, using thermal imaging equipment.

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A

s industrial emergencies go, the February 2009 fire in a 679-foot tunnel used to move petroleum coke beneath a busy Los Angeles County rail corridor did not get much press. One official spokesperson stated it was “relatively insignificant” and “fairly minor.”

Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bruce Arvizu said he found the press release understandable considering today’s overblown reactions to such incidents.

Addressing an audience of industrial firefighters, Arvizu discussed the recent fire as one of the opening speakers at the 2009 Industrial Fire World Emergency Responder Conference & Exposition in Beaumont, TX, in March.

Disagreement still exists whether two loud, earth-shaking blasts reported during a confined space entry by firefighters were coal dust detonations or some other type of concussion.

“Talk about a near miss,” Arvizu said.

“This was a near miss. I’m glad I’m not talking about fatalities.”

Major financial considerations also figured in the emergency. The tunnel ties together two halves of a 265,000-barrel per day refinery, among the largest in California. According to the owners, it supplies about 25 percent of the Los Angeles gasoline market.

Splitting the 630-acre refinery is a 20-

Photo Courtesy of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority

More than 16,000 trains a year travel the Alameda Corridor in Los Angeles. mile dedicated freight expressway known as the Alameda Corridor, which runs a bove the tunnel. The corridor links the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the transcontinental rail network near downtown Los Angeles.

“It’s about ten rail tracks wide,” Arvizu said. “A lot of commerce goes through there. If I had to shut that down, which I have done before, I’d have senators and

the governor breathing down my neck. It’s about $4 million every 15 minutes to shut this rail head down.”

Despite early success, firefighters were forced to abandon confined space entries in favor of flooding the tunnel with more than 400,000 gallons of water.

“In hindsight, we probably could have compressed that incident to less than two hours had we gone with gut instinct to flood it in the beginning,” Arvizu said.

In 31 years as a firefighter, the fire in Carson was Arvizu’s first involving a tunnel. Before arriving on scene for the February 23 fire, he had no idea that this particular tunnel even existed.

“I’ve trained on tunnel fires,” Arvizu said. “Our jurisdiction has had some of the largest tunnel fires in California history. But I’d never been involved in an actual incident.”

TUNNEL VISION VI Los Angeles County firefighters battle underground fire in a refinery tunnel

By ANTON RIECHER

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INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

Likewise, none of the key personnel under his command had direct experience with tunnel fires.

FIRST ALARM Measuring 10 feet in diameter, the tunnel beneath the Alameda Corridor has been part of refinery operations since 1964. It houses a conveyor belt that moves coke, a petroleum byproduct that is 99.9 percent carbon, from a coker unit to a storage barn.

At about 3 p.m. the conveyor belt stopped operating. By about 5 p.m. workers noticed smoke coming from the tunnel opening.

“There is no fire protection or life safety system in that tunnel,” Arvizu said.

Los Angeles County firefighters at the nearest station were just coming back from a drill when the telephone rang. It was the refinery fire chief.

“Our relationship with the refineries is so good that a lot of times they call us directly on the cell phone and talk to us personally,” Arvizu said. “We all become creature of habit like that. Had the firefighters been out I’m not sure how we would have gotten the alarm.”

Arvizu, a battalion chief for nine years, is responsible for a heavily industrialized region of south central Los Angeles County, including collateral responsibility for two ports. His command includes four dual company stations, three single engine companies and nine captains.

“Battalion 7 gets the lion’s share of large fires,” he said. “We get probably two good fires a year that are second and third alarm fires. That means you’ve got 15 to 20 fire engines.”

Shortly after the refinery contacted firefighters, Arvizu received notification from dispatch.

“They said, ‘We’ve got something going with an alarm call,’” he said. “I said, ‘Well, what do you have?’ The dispatcher said, ‘We’re not sure.’”

The tunnel, about 20 feet down, runs east to west. Arvizu met with the refinery fire chief at the west side of the tunnel which was then designated “Division A.” It was one of only two openings available for maintenance and personnel.

“Once we got there the refinery chief

said, ‘Well, it’s not a big deal, just a coke fire,’” Arvizu said. “I said, ‘Copy – Is it in the coke barn?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s in the tunnel.’ I said to myself, ‘Tunnel – oh God!’ You’ve just got a gut feeling that it’s not going to be a good deal.”

Technical information available about the tunnel was limited. It was built using a combination of corrugated pipe and cut and cover construction.

“Just dig a big trench, pour and place the cement, then cover the top of it,” Arvizu said. “Then pour your dirt or ballast over that. It’s a real cheap way to go and offers pretty good integrity.”

Flooding the tunnel was his first inclination, he said. A sign posted at the tunnel entrance lent credence to Arvizu’s original thought.

“Equipment structure integrity issues – possible sharp edges, tripping hazards, access and egress issues, fallen debris, visibility issues, hot coke, energized power lines,” the sign said.

Beside the conveyor system, the tunnel contained about a foot of water and product debris, owing to a plugged drain.

Elevation dropped 15 feet moving from east to west. Because of an onshore breeze, smoke was not much of an issue in the vestibule where the coke collected outside the tunnel.

“When we looked into the tunnel originally we could see a glow of fire and smoke about 75 feet in,” Arvizu said.

A response for a confined space incident in a refinery is probably the largest first alarm that the Los Angeles County Fire Department musters, he said.

Firefighters responded with six fire engines, two trucks, a hazardous materials unit and an urban search-and-rescue team.

“The reason why it didn’t go to a second alarm is because the refinery had a good cadre of firefighters, bringing about 30 or 40 folks,” Arvizu said. “I really didn’t need more resources because we train with these folks a lot. It’s a good relationship.”

Two captains that Arvizu dubbed as his “superstars” supported a confined space entry to attack the fire. He put his initial inclination toward flooding on the backburner.

“I’m a great believer in listening to my folks,” Arvizu said. “I had confidence that it was a good plan, a workable plan. I said,

‘Okay, we’ll just do it like a Level A entry with Level B clothing.’”

Organizationally, duties were divided between incident command and operations.

“The refinery has a fire chief and an assistant chief,” Arvizu said. “We tried to marry the fire chief with IC and the OPS chief with me. It works out really well.”

Arvizu said his rule on organization is to keep it as simple as possible.

“I took operations and logistics but felt I was stretched a bit thin,” he said. “If I had appointed a logistics chief, I would have given him the water group, medical and ventilation. I like to break it down to just three division groups reporting to me – fire attack, RIT and ventilation.”

The overall strategy was offensive, Arvizu said.

“My objective was tunnel access, locate the fire, confine it and ventilate,” he said.

Any confined space entry depends on rigorous fire ground controls following NFPA guidelines, Arvizu said.

“That means setting up your RIT (rapid intervention team), appoint an entry team leader to check people in and out, an air management officer and a communications unit leader,” Arvizu said. “Those benchmarks are really going to insure your success if something goes wrong.” In addition, a decon group and medical group were established.

Communications, often challenging on the fire ground, were well in hand at the tunnel emergency, Arvizu said.

“We have low megahertz for tactical radios,” Arvizu said. “Command radios are high frequency. We were always in contact.

In fact I had four frequencies going. At all major incidents I have a command frequency, an entry frequency, a tactical frequency and an administrative frequency.”

Firefighters are able to isolate those frequencies from the multitude of other emergency radio traffic ongoing in Los Angeles, Arvizu said.

“I hear only what is going on at the incident,” Arvizu said. “I don’t hear about a rescue in South Central L.A. or a shooting or whatever.”

INITIAL ENTRY Firefighters who made the initial entry MAY-JUNE 2009 MAY-JUNE 2009

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Photo Courtesy of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority

The Alameda Corridor, opened in 2002, stretches 20 miles. later reported being very uneasy, Arvizu said.

“They were walking through a foot of water in close proximity to the wall,” Arvizu said. “The ground was uneven with coke slurry. You’ve got all kind of pipe going through there.” Add to that the difficulty of hose handling in a confined space, requiring assigned hose handlers.

Still, the report from that first team was reassuring, Arvizu said. Using two 1¾-inch lines, firefighters moved 75 feet down the tunnel to confront the fire.

“The guys reported that they knocked the fire down,” Arvizu said. “Visibility was down to zero because we had our ventilation set up behind us. We used Tempest positive pressure ventilation blowers operating at about 48,000 cfm (cubic feet per minute) to push everything ahead of us when we made our entry.”

Firefighters exited the tunnel covered in coke dust. The first stop was gross decon, followed by rehab.

“I had our medics set up to take baselines,” Arvizu said. “Believe it or not, about 20 percent of our people did not get out of rehab real quick because their baselines were a little bit high. After about 20 minutes, they recovered.”

At about 6:30 p.m., firefighters made a second entry. The team was instructed to drop “bread crumbs” — also known as glow sticks. Arvizu also emphasized what he referred to as “trigger points.”

“I told them, ‘100 feet or 10 minutes on air,’” Arvizu said. “It gives them one-third in and two-third air to come back out.”

If the firefighter cannot reach that 100 foot mark, his play pipe still gives the chance for penetration, he said. On a commercial fire, advancing 150 to 200 feet inside increases the risk versus benefit ratio exponentially.

“If something goes wrong, your chances of surviving are very, very small,” Arvizu said.

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INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

One essential piece of safety equipment that Arvizu carries is an egg timer.

“I set it for 10 to 14 minutes,” Arvizu said. “Guys make fun of it but if you look at fires historically, if things aren’t improving within 14 minutes, it’s time to change tactics. If it’s getting better, you get a bottle change and go back in. If it’s getting worse, you pull everybody out and regroup.”

Again, the firefighters exited the tunnel with a positive report.

“They said, ‘The thermal balance is down to 170 degrees F — it’s a cold smoke fire,’” Arvizu said. “They thought that a third entry would get it.”

The refinery fire chief wanted to check for himself. Thinking this would be the last entry necessary, Arvizu expected to again penetrate the tunnel at least 75 feet. Procedure would be the same as before, with firefighters rotating every 10 minutes until the fire was out. The only difference was Arvizu ordered the use of one-hour air bottles.

“We have about 20 one-hour bottles we can put immediately at a fire and get 20 more if we need them from outlying companies,” Arvizu said.

The specific mission of the third entry was reconnaissance to check for damage to the integrity of the tunnel and extinguish the remaining fire. Firefighters descended to tunnel level and were about to enter when the first of two resounding concussions like sonic booms were heard. After the concussions, heavy black smoke and large flame erupted from the tunnel.

For Arvizu, the moment brought an unpleasant flashback.

“I heard the entry team safety officer say, ‘Okay, that’s it, everybody out,’” Arvizu said. “We were in New York together the first week after 9/11, working on the (World Trade Center) pile. About 2 a.m., something went crash and bang. He was the safety officer on a boom and said the same thing — ‘Okay, that’s it, everybody out.’ It was at least 300 yards to get off the pile and you had to go under girders and around stuff below grade. There was no easy way to just get out.”

Fortunately, in Los Angeles, everybody safely evacuated to the exterior entrance. Firefighters then paused to reflect on what had just happened.

Later, Arvizu had the opportunity to question firefighters who were above ground on the Division A side of the tunnel when the ‘loud concussions’ were heard.

“One firefighter said ‘Chief, I was in fear of my life,’” Arvizu said. “He said the ground shook enough that he lost his balance.

This guy was a 6-foot, 4-inch body builder type. He said, ‘Honest to God, Chief, I looked at the truck and it was shaking like a rag doll. We immediately jumped in and drove it another 100 yards away.’”

The cause of the concussions is still under investigation. That cause will likely be electrical, mechanical or product related, Arvizu said.

“Some people say it was concrete spalding off the walls,” Arvizu said. “I walked that tunnel three days later. Where it was supposedly spalded looked like a nuclear bomb went off. All the metal light fixtures were bent and melted.”

By 8:20 p.m., the incident commander decided to flood the tunnel after reviewing all available options.

“It was suggested that we use high expansion foam,” Arvizu said. “We talked to Ansul to get some calculations. The Ansul representative was concerned that due to the length of the tunnel and the 15-foot elevation, as much as two-fifths of it could still be burning after foam was introduced.”

Within two hours, firefighters flooded the entire tunnel using 4,300 gpm of water delivered at both entrances. Runoff was diverted to the refinery’s clarifiers that easily handled the load.

“It was cheap and simple,” Arvizu said. “In hindsight, we learned much and probably will not make an entry like that again.”

Aside from flooding as a first step, Arvizu said he would have changed several other aspects of the confined space entry.

Increased staffing for the RIT was one of those aspects.

“I probably should have had another 10 folks there,” Arvizu said. “Not that you’re going to need 24 people, but RIT people get tired too. We have really adopted Phoenix’s plan for using RIT. I’ve talked to our people about not putting three or four people on RIT but 10 or 12. At any major fire, I have about 15 folks assigned to RIT for evacuation if something goes wrong.”

OTHER CHANGES Firefighters can be as bad about rubber necking as civilians.

One problem at the tunnel fire was that entry teams waiting their turn tended to crowd the entrance to see what was going on.

“In the future, I would assign a captain to get the teams together and cue them up about 50 yards away,” Arvizu said.

Maintaining discipline proved to be a problem in one other episode, he said. At one point, Arvizu turned to his safety officer

L.A. firefighters consider CAFS

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n hindsight, one alternative unexplored by firefighters battling the underground tunnel fire at a Carson, CA, oil refinery was using compressed air foam (CAF), Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bruce Arvizu said.

“It never occurred to me until I talked to (IFW chairman) David White and other people,” Arvizu said. “In Los Angeles County we make the headlines every year because of brush fires. The department bought 20 CAFS fire engines to spray houses to protect from wildfire. I never in my wildest dreams thought about using it here. We’re learning that CAFS can be applicable in many other ways, especially in ports where we have these big containers coming in.

They are good on bulk fires.”

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and asked him to set up rehab. He refused.

“Safety officers are great people but they get so focused in on doing one thing that they are not very versatile,” Arvizu said. “I said, ‘Just take a minute or two and get it going.’ He said, ‘I can’t – I’m the safety officer.’ So we went toe to toe over that.”

Arvizu said he has already scheduled a confined space awareness class for his division. He has also launched an effort to identify and pre-plan all industrial tunnels in his jurisdiction.

“I have found three more,” Arvizu said. “That makes seven, including a long train tunnel and several vehicle tunnels.”

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Photo by Eric Spivack/Provided Courtesy of Hinesburg (VT) Fire Department

An aerial device is used to deliver compressed air foam during a September 2008 cheese factory fire in Hinesburg, VT.

CAFS helps Vermont factory avoid smoky flavored product

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n September 2008, Fire Chief Al Barber arrived at the Saputo cheese factory in Hinesburg, VT, to find more than 12,000 square feet of the chemical storage area ablaze, the largest industrial fire in the state in many years.

Within only eight minutes, the firefighters achieved the first initial knockdown, but due to a shift in focus to a firefighter who fell and was injured, the fire regained a hold on the building.

Barber attributes the initial success to use of a compressed air foam system (CAFS).

“Once we arrived on-scene, we had an aerial ladder truck up near the involved area and flooded it with CAFS,” Barber said.

“It simply wouldn’t have happened that quickly with just water.”

The firefighters’ quick work avoided a total loss at Saputo, which employs 80 workers.

Hinesburg’s fire department averages about 30 to 35 active members, all volunteer firefighters and first responder/EMTs from 18 INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

within the town. The department covers all fire, medical, hazmat and heavy rescue calls for the towns of Hinesburg and St. George, as well as mutual aid to other surrounding towns. The HFD responds to approximately 450 calls per year.

At 9:26 p.m., Sept. 29, dispatch alerted HFD members by pager to a structure fire at Saputo. Within moments, more reports were coming in from dispatch and responding members saw flames through the roof at the northeast corner of the factory.

As Hinesburg’s engines left the station, Chief Barber was already calling on nine mutual aid fire departments with nearly 175 members to respond as well. Engines, tankers, a tower ladder truck, an aerial ladder truck and manpower were requested from Charlotte, Shelburne, Williston, Richmond, Monkton, Starksboro and Essex Junction.

Route 116 through town was closed to traffic to allow emergency vehicles full and safe approach to the scene.

Firefighters from Richmond responded to cover the Hinesburg station, but would later be requested to the scene.

The fire was located in the area of the plant used for chemical storage, maintenance shops and general excess storage. The storage area included canisters and drums of chemicals used for cleaning and sterilizing production machines. Based on this information, and the size of the fire, a defensive attack was put in place.

All Saputo employees had been safely evacuated and accounted for before firefighters arrived. By that time, flames already dwarfed the factory’s 100-foot-tall milk towers. Streaming compressed air foam from the top of an aerial ladder with a 2½inch hoseline was put into action by Barber.

Using Waterous CAFS on Hinesburg Engine 2 and Charlotte Engine 1, the fire was held in check while Williston’s Tower and Essex Junction’s ladder arrived and set up master stream operations. No firefighters were allowed into the building during the initial fire attack.

A CAFS unit is capable of delivering water, water and foam solution, or a water and foam solution charged with compressed air. CAFS is a high energy delivery system because its foam generation uses a combination of power sources, such as a water pump and an air compressor to create and propel foam. In a typical CAFS unit employing a balanced system, the foam solution is normally proportioned at a ratio ranging from .1 percent to .5 percent with .3 percent being the standard baseline for application.

After knockdown, the Hinesburg crew continued flooding the involved area from above. Meanwhile, Barber assigned the Charlotte Fire Department, led by Battalion Chief Dick St. George, to interior attack.

“We were assigned by fire command to cut the fire off from the main offices and production areas of the building, which was about 90,000 some-odd square feet of uninvolved space,” St. George said.

Entering the involved part of the structure to keep the fire from spreading, the Charlotte crew crawled into the 12,000 square foot chemical storage areas on their bellies to safely avoid the severe heat conditions.

“We ended up having to hand-jack a 700 foot, 2½-inch CAFS line into the interior, which we couldn’t have done if it wasn’t compressed air foam,” St. George said. “A water line would have been too heavy and cumbersome and far too taxing on our firefighters.”

Charlotte firefighters risked chemical contamination, virtually swimming into a highly caustic chemical soup created by the initial fire damage. The involved area housed two 2,500-gallon chemical tanks containing 35 percent sodium hydroxide and 55gallon drums of various other chemicals used to process mozzarella and other cheeses at the factory.

Completely incinerated by the fire, the drums melted, spilling chemicals together into what became a dangerously contamined mix, Barber said.

“The pH readings were at 13.5, which is basically lye, and the firefighters were covered in it,” Barber said. “Fortunately, no one was burned from the chemicals, but our bunker gear, packs,

imaging cameras, nearly all our equipment and gear were ruined because of the contamination.”

Fire walls held the fire to the warehouse and milk receiving areas. The offices and production area received only smoke and water damage. Shortly after 11 p.m., the fire was officially declared under control.

By 5 a.m., the fire was mostly extinguished, with only hot spots remaining. Firefighters were called in from Starksburo, Huntington and Monkton firefighters for fresh manpower, while mutual aid departments on scene overnight started to be released.

Fortunately, all contaminated runoff water was contained within the building and flowed to the Saputo Foods pre-treatment plant. A pH test of the brook behind the plant was normal.

One Hinesburg firefighter was injured early in the attack when he fell from a ladder. Capt. Jonathan Wainer injured his right hand, wrist and knee in the fall, requiring several surgeries and hours of therapy.

Despite firefighters saving much of the factory, the Quebecbased firm decided in October to permanently close the cheesemaking facility. Some of the plant’s workers were offered transfers to other facilities in the firm’s U.S. division.

Compressed air foam has changed the way Hinesburg firefighters do their job, Barber said.

“We’re more effective in getting a quick knockdown and we operate much safer in our attack,” Barber said. “The Saputo cheese factory was an impressive, damaging fire, but it would have been far more devastating, dangerous and costly without CAFS.” C

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PENETRATING THE DARKNESS CAFS married with nitrogen brings mine fire under control

Above, Cresson (TX) firefighters use a 185 cfm CAFS with a single 1½-inch hose to extinguish burning fiberglass tanks and an oil filled pit. At right, a sample of the thick, dense foam that reaches areas of combustion deep within the cracks and fissures of a burning mine.

By LISA Y. LaFOSSE CAFSCO

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hat started as a roof fall became a carbon monoxide release in the working area of a coal mine and caused a complete shut down at Consolidated Buchanan No. 1 coal mine in Virginia. Multi-million dollar mining machinery sat entombed and at risk.

Within 72 hours of notification on July 16, 2007, CAFSCO mobilized and responded to the incident with a nitrogen foam injection plan. Massive amounts of nitrogen have been used to dilute oxygen in coal mine environments as a method to suffocate fires. This method of fire control is expensive and time consuming.

It can take months of high volume nitrogen injection to dilute the toxic mine gases to a safe limit. Rather than inject massive amounts of nitrogen into the mine to dilute the CO2 – an effective but time consuming and expensive undertaking – CAFSCO requested Chemguard to develop a more stable Class A foam that would help reduce the volume of costly nitrogen and improve the dissipation rate. In other words, control the density and the 20 INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

drainage time of the environmentally-friendly bubbles.

Because that compressed foam is a semi-solid, nitrogenenhanced foam, it displaces the toxic gases while slowly releasing conservative amounts of nitrogen, maintaining dilution in the foamed areas of the mine. The foam has penetrating and wetting characteristics that saturate the interior of the mine from floor to ceiling, entering all cracks and crevices, effectively soaking out all sources of ignition. Compressed foam is generated with a commercial air compressor and a water pump that uses a fire hose to convey the dense and durable foam bubbles to bore holes that are drilled or punched into the selected areas of the coal mine.

Using this nitrogen method to inject over 700 million gallons of compressed nitrogen foam, into a five square mile area, CAFSCO displaced carbon monoxide and toxic gasses out of the mine and into a gas recovery system which had the capability of separating the methane from the toxic gases. The methane recovered was used for commercial applications. Using the Class

A foam concentrate can shorten recovery time and cut costs in toxic gases dissipation and fire fighting operations in subsurface environments.

Gas injection with CO2 can have limited beneficial effects on a fire burning in a sub-surface coal mine. The gas migrates through burned out channels and takes the same path that the combustion ventilation takes. The gas, when heated, tends to rise and travels in the roof areas of the burned out channels before exiting the coal mine with the combustion gases. If the CO2 does not get heated by the fire, it remains heavier than air and will seek paths in the refuse that flow out of the lower areas of the coal mine. In either case, CO2 by itself is not very efficient in controlling combustion because it cannot cool the carbonaceous Class A fuel in the way a liquid can. Carbon dioxide produces carbonic acid when it comes in contact with the water, which is produced as a by-product of the original combustion. This acid can cause additional pollution problems in a coal mine.

A liquid such as water will not reach the upper areas of the burned out voids and channels in the coal mine and will always flow to the lowest parts of the coal mine, missing the combustion that always tends to rise to the top of the areas involved. Water does not penetrate into the Class A fuels that have been covered with the products of combustion such as the carbonaceous soot that is water repellant. It is extremely difficult to use water to soak out a coal mine fire. The pollution caused from run-off is extremely hazardous because its been in contact with the products of combustion.

Mark Cummins, the original inventor of the Compressed Air Foam System (CAFS), U.S. Patents 4318443 and 4457375, discovered compressed foam bubbles are unique from all other types of foam that are comprised of thin films of surfactant treated water which encapsulate a small amount of air that is 78 percent inert nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen that is not available as a free gas to feed the fire because it is encapsulated in the bubbles.

When the wet bubbles contact the extreme heat of combustion, the water in the bubbles explodes into steam and expands in the form of gas volume 1,700 times the volume of the original water.

This expansion causes a positive pressure in the area of combustion, which prevents free air oxygen from entering the area from any direction. All of the burned out channels and voids begin to exhaust away from this area with no incoming air or ventilation to feed the fire. CAFSCO’s experience allows us to control the most intense sub-surface fires involved in deep coal mine fires.

Surfactants in the foaming agents are similar to common dishwashing detergents and are not harmful to the environment.

In fact, they stop the vast toxic releases from the products of combustion because they are very hydrophilic (carbon loving).

Foam bubbles act as a filter to attract the toxic hydrocarbon gases and keep the carcinogens, such as benzene, inside the coal mine instead of allowing them to exhaust to the outside air.

The water in the thin films of the bubbles cools every contacted surface, fills the voids in the channels and voids from floor to ceiling and blocking any unwanted ventilation of gases in or out of the coal mine. The surfactants also cause the water that is released from the bubbles to penetrate deep into the Class A

matter everywhere it contacts a surface, and reduces or completely stops any run-off water pollution.

CAFSCO have applied for patents for several other concepts using compressed foam. The foam bubble provides the perfect environment for a microbe population that can conscientiously consume the oxygen and create the CO2 that helps extinguish the fires and prevent new fires from occurring in the subterranean environment.

The unique environment of the bubble provides the necessary water, nutrients and gases needed for the selected microbes to become healthy and vigorous and to begin to multiply into hungry masses looking for new sources of carbon to consume. The compressed foam is the best method to transport and to apply the living environments of the bubbles to the areas within the coal and oil bearing seams beneath the earth’s surface, where the microbes can find the new sources of carbon to begin the process of converting the carbon in the oil and coal into beneficial, and in some cases, clean burning fuel gases.

General Electric Research Division is discussing the possibility of a joint venture with CAFSCO to use microbe knowledge and compressed foam technology to provide a new way of getting clean energy out of the coal and oil without having to dig or pump the carbon from below the earth’s surface. There will be no waste left on the surface and the CO2 produced from the natural gas power plants will be used to feed the algae ponds that turn it into oxygen and diesel fuel.

According to scientific documentation, the more fire means the more CO2, which has been used to extinguish fires for many years. The reason fire fighters have not noticed it or used it until now is because they use water to fight fires. Water only absorbs heat faster than it is being created by the fire and, in extreme fires and heat, steam from the water (H2O) is only one phase away from separating into its elements, hydrogen (an explosive gas) and oxygen, (the gas that makes hydrogen explode).

Firefighters cannot do much with the CO2 produced by the fire when they use water. But foam is a different ball game. The surfactants in the foam are carbon loving, which means the surfactant molecules attach to the carbon by electron bonding.

That is why the CAFS foam cleans the air of CO2 and explosive coal dust when it is sprayed through an entry. The foam also cools the massive amount of CO2 produced by the fire. The CO2 is heavier than air when cooled, and when the CAFS foam is used to block the ventilation of this gas, it becomes an effective fire extinguishing agent that helps put the fire out in areas where the foam has not reached or cannot reach. That is the secret. It is simple, but it can be developed into a new technology.

Through 30 plus years of experience with the use of CAFS, subsurface fires create a unique situation that allows CAFSCO to tailor a complete site specific, turn-key injection plan to extinguish extreme fires or use the unique ability of specialized enhanced foam to extinguish hidden ignition sources.

CAFSCO research continues to develop earth friendly microbiological methods to create inert environments in the sealed areas of coal mines.

Visit the CAFSCO web site at www.cafsco.com.

MAY-JUNE 2009

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DuPont introduces new thermal liner technology

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f 103 firefighter line-of-duty deaths reported in 2007, only four were from burns. According to National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) statistics, the leading cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest, claiming 39 firefighter lives. Of 38,340 fire ground injuries reported that year, 395 heart attacks and strokes were reported.

Another 2,410 injuries were attributed to “thermal stress” other than burns, the NFPA reports.

“We recognize that for firefighters the number one cause of death is heart attacks and heat exhaustion,” said Dale Outhous, global business director of DuPont’s personal protection division.

“We continue to look at technology that makes turnout gear lighter and more comfortable while also providing increased thermal protection for firefighters.”

Nomex® On Demand™, a patented smart fiber technology, gives firefighters up to 20 percent more thermal performance when they encounter emergency conditions. However, in routine conditions, the material remains thin and flexible, combining thermal protection with breathability.

“It gives the firefighter increased thermal protection when they absolutely need it in emergency conditions,” Outhous said.

Used as a thermal liner in firefighter turnout gear, Nomex® On Demand™, reacts to emergency conditions and automatically expands to trap more air for greater thermal insulation, Outhous said.

“Once you get past 250 degrees Fahrenheit you run the risk of second degree burns,” Outhous said. “This material does not change form until that point. When the temperature inside the turnout reaches 250 degrees or higher, this technology selfactivates and expands.”

Testing shows that Nomex® On Demand™, achieves a significant increase in thermal protection performance (TPP) with minimal shrinkage. On the other hand, it maintains good total heat loss (THL) under routine conditions.

“Most of the time firefighters are not in an emergency heat situation,” Outhous said. “The thermal liner remains a thinner, more comfortable system. It will only activate when exposed to the right temperature. That’s why we call it smart technology.”

The new technology is commercially available in the United States and Canada and will be available globally in late 2009.

Nomex® On Demand™, has been tested by DuPont, its customers and independent third parties. It meets NFPA standards and has been certified for use by Underwriters Laboratories.

“The industry is excited about this new technology and what it will provide to the firefighter,” Outhous said.

In terms of price, Outhous describes Nomex® On Demand™, as a “premium thermal liner technology.”

It will be about a 10 percent premium on the thermal liner, but when you translate that into the turnout gear, DuPont estimates you are probably only looking at a one or two percent increase.”

While initially available in firefighter gear, DuPont is reviewing additional applications for Nomex® On Demand™, including auto racing, wildfire control, oil and gas operations and military uses.C 22

INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

INDUSTRY NEWS

NIOSH issues aerial ladder warning

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IOSH recommends that all fire departments utilizing aerial ladder trucks with locking (pin-anchored, lever actuated, clamped) waterways immediately take the following actions to reduce the risk of fire fighters being struck by unsecured waterways or parts of the waterway:

• Ensure that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and/or Guidelines (SOGs) on setting up multi-position waterways include steps to properly position the waterway and to inspect and verify that the locking mechanism (anchoring pin(s), lever, clamps, etc.) are properly installed and functioning as designed before pressurizing the waterway.

• Properly train and practice the correct method of securing waterways and verifying they are secured (per manufacturer’s recommendations).

NIOSH is currently investigating an April 8, 2008, firefighter line-of-duty-death that illustrates that adhering to manufacturer recommended set-up procedures for aerial ladder operations is paramount to ensuring fire fighter safety.

Preliminary findings in this investigation suggest that some equipment designs do not provide secondary stops for the waterway on aerial ladders. Thus, failure to properly secure the waterway in the proper position can lead to catastrophic waterway failure and possible serious or fatal injury to firefighters working in the area. The pin-anchored waterway design involved in this particular investigation is not limited to a single model or apparatus manufacturer. NIOSH is aware of at least seven similar incidents that occurred in Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and Ontario without serious injury. Newer aerial ladder trucks may incorporate different types of anchoring mechanisms and/ or a more fail-safe design but proper set up still needs to be verified before operation.

On April 8, 2008, a volunteer deputy fire chief (the incident commander), was killed when struck by a motorized water monitor and 30 feet of aluminum pipe that was launched off an elevated aerial ladder at a fire at an industrial manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania. The truck was normally transported in the “rescue mode” with the monitor pinned to the second section of ladder so that the waterway would not be in the way if the ladder was set up for rescue operations. At the incident scene, when the waterway was pressurized, the monitor and its support bracket, along with the last 30-foot section of pipe were “launched” off the aerial ladder by the force of the water pressure in the pipe.

The monitor flew approximately 75 feet and fell, striking the incident commander on the head, killing him instantly. After the incident, the anchor pin was found on the ground, in front of the truck’s cab. The waterway did not include any secondary mechanical stops to prevent the separation of the water monitor in the event the anchoring pin was not properly seated. The NIOSH Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program is investigating this incident and a full report will be available at a later date.

A properly seated pin at the fly section for defensive water stream operations is highlighted in the red circle. The hole behind it (yellow arrow) shows the location where the pin would be inserted (from the top) to keep the monitor assembly back at the second ladder section for rescue mode.

NIOSH would like to bring this information to the attention of all U.S. fire departments and firefighters who operate or work around aerial ladder trucks with locking (pin-anchored, lever actuated, clamped) waterways so that future occurrences of waterway monitor launches or the unexpected movement of the waterway monitor can be prevented. If secondary mechanical stops are present, the unexpected impact of the waterway monitor against the mechanical stop could cause structural damage to the aerial ladder and jeopardize the safety of any firefighter standing on the aerial ladder. While not a contributing factor in the fatal incident, NIOSH reminds fire departments to comply with relevant federal regulations and NFPA standards for fire apparatus inspections and certification.

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Kidde recalls XL fire extinguishers

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idde, in conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, announces a voluntary recall to replace certain XL fire extinguisher units because they may lose pressure faster than others due to an off-specification lubricant. This loss of pressure may result in the extinguisher failing to operate when activated. The affected units were manufactured in Mexico between October 2007 and April 2008. Kidde has no record of injuries due to the affected extinguishers.

Affected XL models include FX340SC, FX340H, FX340GW, XL5MR, FX21OR, FX340SC-2, FX210W, XL2.5TCZ-4 and E-340-3.

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INCIDENT LOG

Underline Items Denote Fatality

March 1 — Alashan League, China: 3 workers died from a carbon monoxide leak at a chemical plant.

March 2 — Mailiao, Taiwan: An explosion at an ethylene plant killed 1.

March 3 — Rogers City, MI: A building at a lime and stone plant received extensive damage in a fire.

March 3 — Homberg, Germany: Fire broke out in a filtration building at a pigments manufacturer.

March 4 — Rome, GA: An 8,000 gallon tank containing hydrochloric acid collapsed at a plant.

March 5 — Bend, OR: Dust filters on a paint booth at a sign company ignited, activating the sprinklers.

March 5 — Hastings, NE: An explosion in a grain grinder at an ethanol plant injured 2 workers.

March 5 — Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Japan: Fire broke out in a reactor containment building at a nuclear power plant.

March 5 — Perm, Russia: 2 workers died when hydrogen sulfide leaked at an oil refinery.

March 5 — Reading, PA: Ink at a printing plant spilled into the Schuylkill River March 6 — San Jose, CA: A chemical leak at a biochemical plant forced employees to evacuate.

March 6 — Yahud, Israel: Residents were evacuated when a fire broke out at a chemical plant.

March 6 — Youngsville, NC: Fire broke out in an outdoor storage area at a plant specializing in kitchen ventilators.

March 7 — Jefferson County, TX: A construction worker died at an oil refinery when a crane fell.

March 7 — Plaquemine, LA: More than 100 people were evacuated after a derailed tank car containing molten sulfur began leaking.

March 7 — Port Alice, BC: A tanker carrying sodium chlorate bound for a paper mill overturned.

March 8 — Akhalgori, Georgia: An explosion rocked an ammunition depot.

March 8 — Carson, CA: A hydrogen sulfide leak was reported at an oil refinery.

March 8 — Jesup, IA: Nearby residents were evacuated when several railcars containing ethanol derailed.

March 8 — Longmenqiao, China: 3 people died in an explosion at a feed additive factory.

March 9 — Oldham County, KY: Fire destroyed a building at a lumber products plant, injuring a firefighter.

March 10 — Abu Dhabi, UAE: 3 workers at a gas plant were injured in an explosion.

March 10 — Hatfield Twp., PA: Flames broke out at a hazardous materials storage facility.

March 10 — Huntington, IN: An explosion in an aluminum foundry furnace spewed molten metal on the plant floor.

March 10 — Luke, WV: Nearly 4,000 gallons of toxic coal ash spilled from a pipeline, narrowly missing the Potomac River.

March 10 — Maryville, TN: An ammonia leak 24 INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

at an ice company forced area residents to evacuate.

March 10 — St. James Parish, LA: A contractor working on an underground pipeline at an oil storage facility died when fire erupted.

March 11 — Beauport, Quebec: An explosion was reported at a galvanizing plant.

March 11 — Moreton Bay, Australia: A cargo ship lost 620 tons of ammonium nitrate in the wake of a cyclone.

March 11 — Newburgh, NY: A chemical reaction triggered an explosion at a prosthetics plant.

March 11 — Rye, UK: About 340 tons of chemicals were released when a storage tank collapsed.

March 11 — Tupman, CA: A propane facility reported a fire contained to a process heater that was allowed to burn itself out.

March 12 — Charleston, SC: Fiber dust ignited at a rubber recycling plant, resulting in a brief fire.

March 12 — Jaffrey, NH: Fire broke out at a match book plant.

March 12 — Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico: 2 workers were killed in a steam explosion at a steel plant.

March 12 — Nan’am District, China: A worker died when ammonia gas leaked from a burst pipe at a pharmaceutical plant.

March 12 — Philadelphia, PA: 10 contract workers at a refinery were evaluated after hydrofluoric acid vapors escaped.

March 12 — Port Lisas, Trinidad & Tobago: An explosion and fire were reported at an ammonia plant.

March 12 — San Jose, CA: A fire at a metal fabrication plant injured 3 workers.

March 12 — Santa Maria, CA: Problems with a vapor recovery system at a crude oil refinery lead to a release of hydrogen sulfide gas.

March 12 — Springdale, AR: A small fire broke out in a hammer mill.

March 13 — Loudon, TN: Smokestack insulation caught fire during maintenance at a corn refinery.

March 14 — Halstead, KS: A fire in a chemical storage area forced the evacuation of a plant specializing in agricultural and industrial belts.

March 15 — Kingsbury, IN: Sprinklers quickly extinguished a fire at a bio-diesel plant.

March 16 — Golden, CO: A power outage at a beer can plant caused a fire in a drying oven.

March 16 — New Britain, CT: 2 dozen workers at a food processing plant were overcome by an ammonia leak.

March 16 — Phoenix, AZ: A hydrogen leak at an industrial gas facility resulted in an explosion.

March 18 — East Alton, IL: A flange on an acid line broke at a metal stamping plant, causing a small spill.

March 18 — Nashville, TN: A plant making water pumps and other products was evacuated when a jar of ammonium hydrate broke.

March 19 — Berkeley County, S.C.: Workers complained about breathing problems after

For Complete Incident Logs, Visit www.fireworld.com contact with calcium phosphate dibasic at a freight facility.

March 19 — Rancho Santa Margarita, CA: An explosion in an electric water heater at a plastics manufacturing plant killed two people and injured a third.

March 20 — Spruce Pine, NC: An explosion in a dust collector rocked an outboard motor plant.

March 20 — Saint Jean, New Brunswick: Neighbors complained about the strong smell of gasoline escaping from a floating roof storage tank.

March 21 — Linden, NJ: A brief fire did not seriously disrupt production at an oil refinery.

March 21 — Whiting, IN: Hot vapor sprayed out of a crude processing unit, injuring a contractor.

March 22 — Masyla, Yemen: Fire swept through an oil storage facility.

March 23 — Chongqing, China: Twelve people died when the roof of a chemical plant collapsed.

March 23 — La Pobla de Mafumet, Spain: An operator at a refinery died when he was struck by a truck.

March 23 — Formosa, Brazil: Three people died when a tank exploded in a soybean oil plant.

March 23 — Narayanpur, India: Fire broke out at two chemical plants.

March 23 — Shuifu County, China: 17 people were injured in an explosion at a chemical fertilizer plant.

March 24 — Montbeliard, France: A major gas fire broke out behind a distribution facility.

March 25 — Buricharg, Bangladesh: Three workers died in a boiler explosion at a rice mill.

March 26 — Maresme, Spain: A worker suffered burns in a chemical plant explosion.

March 26 — Marina de Cudeyo, Spain: An explosion at a synthetic rubber plant hurt 2.

March 26 — Port Arthur, TX: A power outage at an oil refinery triggered a brief flash fire.

March 26 — Port Talbot, UK: Fire broke out at a tire recycling plant.

March 27 — Sacramento, CA: Firefighters responded to a hydrogen leak at a soap plant.

March 27 — Cranston, RI: A small leak in an ammonia storage tank forced the evacuation of an electrical parts factory.

March 27 — Seymour, CT: Powdered chemicals ignited at a cable manufacturing plant.

March 27 — West Chester Twp., OH: A heat producing chemical reaction forced the evacuation of a pharmaceutical plant.

March 29 — Avalon, TX: A chemical plant fire forced residents within two miles to evacuate.

March 29 — Rawlins, WY: Fire shut down a hydro-desulfurization unit at an oil refinery.

March 30 — Northboro, MA: A hydrogen leak forced employees to evacuate a ceramics and plastics plant.

March 31 — Lexington, KY: Roofing tar caught fire at a paper plant.

March 31 — St. Louis, MO: A five-story dryer at a soap factory caught fire.

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Editor’s Note: On Dec. 19, 1982, a large crowd of power plant workers and local residents in Tacoa, Venezuela, gathered to watch a burning crude oil storage tank.

Nearly eight hours had passed since the tank first caught fire. Had the observers better understood a devastating phenomenon known as boilover, the eruption of steam and hot oil that followed would not have claimed more than 150 lives. The first hand accounts of those who witnessed the event emphasize the obvious – the potential for boilover must be treated with respect.

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afé owner Benjamin Frontado remembers a national guardsman running down the street ahead of the burning oil. Frontado’s neighbor’s ten year old daughter stood against a wall, too frightened to move. The guardsman scooped her up, carried her to safety, then ran back to rescue someone else. He never made it. They found his body in the sea three days later. Frontado himself turned and ran down the hill. The heat was indescribable, he said, the most agonizing pain he ever felt.

Draftsman Jose Marcano tried to reach the houses near the tank to help any victims trapped there. The heat and smoke were unbearable. Struggling forward he came upon two young firemen lying unconscious in a ditch.

“I pulled them out and began to drag them to safety when I realized that flames were coming toward us,” Marcano said.

“With nowhere to run I jumped back to the ditch. When I turned to the firemen, they were not there anymore. They had been consumed by the flames.”

Police officer Carlos Antonio Vergara describes the tragedy as follows: “It was the last Sunday before Christmas. Dawn was breaking over the sleeping seaside village of Arrecife, Venezuela, when three employees of the Electricidad de Caracas Tacoa generating plant drove up the hill to the foot of Storage Tank 8. Two men climbed to the top of the 56-foot (17-meter) container to make a routine check of the fuel level. The third man, Alexis Alzaul, remained with the jeep below.

“Suddenly, at 5:45 a.m., the top of the tank blew off with a shattering roar. Only one-third full with 3.5 million gallons of

Venezuela holds record for most people killed in a crude oil boilover

INFERNO AT TACOA

By RONALD SCHILLER

heavy fuel oil, the tank burst into flames, sending dense black smoke hundreds of feet into the air. The two men on the tanker were killed. Alzaul, on the ground, barely managed to escape.”

The fire department was alerted and, within minutes, five trucks and 25 firemen from La Guaira fire station, 15 miles east, were clanging along the winding road to the Tacoa plant, followed by more than 50 firemen and equipment from neighboring fire stations and from Caracas, 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast. Over 300 police, national guardsmen, civil defense volunteers and other rescue groups also arrived throughout the morning.

Newspapers and TV stations sent reporters, photographers and camera crews.

The police cleared the village of its residents and established a safety perimeter around the fire. However, some residents refused to leave their houses.

The newsmen and photographers would not be kept out. Many of them got as close to the blaze as the firemen themselves.

The fire was very difficult to reach. The burning tank stood on a steep hillside 180 feet (55 meters) above sea level, surrounded by a 56-foot (17-meter) high earthen dike whose top could not be approached because of the heavy smoke and intense heat. Assessing the situation, the firefighters came to the conclusion that the foam and water in the trucks were not enough to combat the inferno. The oil would have to burn itself out. Instead firefighters concentrated on controlling a burning oil leak coming from the dike of Tank 8, to avoid igniting Tank 9 nearby.

At 11:30 a.m. a report was radioed to Caracas that the fire was under control.

The dikes near the burning tank were lined with firemen and newsmen. Almost the entire management of the electric company stood watching from a bluff less than 200 feet (60 meters) away. The alleys between the nearby houses were crowded with fire equipment, ambulances, police cars, television vans and private automobiles.

Plant workers, rescue teams, police and firefighters milled around with nothing to do. To one observer, the scene seemed “more like a fiesta than a fire.” But inside the burning tank an ominous thing was happening. Mixed with the oil at the MAY-JUNE 2009

25

bottom of the container was a layer of water, which the fire had super heated to its boiling point. At 12:15 p.m. the water suddenly flashed into steam, expanding 1,700 times in volume to create what petroleum fire experts call a “boilover.” The tank erupted like a volcano, shooting burning oil 1500 feet (450 meters) into the air, forming a giant fireball nearly 2,000 feet (over 600 meters) long and 800 feet (275 meters) wide.

This was the first time the phenomenon was ever known to occur in a fire of heavy fuel oil. Up to then it had been associated only with crude oil.

The eruption snuffed out the lives of some 20 firemen and an unknown number of newsmen on the dike. Descending in all directions the burning rain set fire to people, vehicles, houses, even boats in the water as much as 1,500 feet (1450 meters) away.

“This burning oil missed the electric company executives watching from the nearby bluff, but as they fled they were overtaken by a wave of heat estimated to have reached more than 1,500 degrees Centigrade,” said Electricidad president Oscar Machado Zuloaga. “It scorched the backs of their heads, necks and arms, singeing their lungs when they took a deep breath like a giant flamethrower.”

As the searing heat reached the vehicles parked on the hill, gas tanks exploded like bombs. Glass windshields dissolved and the melting aluminum engines of the fire trucks dripped to the earth in puddles. To escape the excruciating blast, people threw themselves into the ocean, including many who could not swim.

Carried by the wind, the wave of heat scorched people in the houses above the fire, including a baby sleeping on a hillside three kilometers away.

But worse was in store. Thirty seconds behind the heat blast came torrents of burning oil, which mingled with the melted asphalt of the roads to form molten rivers eight inches thick.

Following the contours of the hill, the blazing mixture ran down roads and alleys, poured over walls, through gardens and houses, igniting everything it touched. Thick black smoke turned day into night. At the bottom of the hill the lava flamed over beaches and into the sea, burning on the surface and killing many of the struggling swimmers.

Sitting in his helicopter parked on the beach, Metropolitan Police pilot Josg Paolucci was unaware of what was happening until he saw screaming children running along the sand with blistered skin and flesh “dripping from their bodies like wax from a candle.” Suddenly he felt the melted Plexiglas of the windshield falling on his hands. He dived into the bay just as the helicopter gas tank exploded.

“There was no time to think,” he said, “only to react.” Paolucci escaped by swimming underwater, using his arms to flail the fire away from his face each time he came up for air.

Freddy Garcia, of Radio Caracas Television was waiting for one of his crew mates to return with batteries for his camera when he noticed policemen fleeing. Turning toward the tank, Garcia saw a tongue of fire rushing at him. He began to run, the searing heat burning hotter and hotter into his back. When he reached a fire truck, he dived under it, breaking his arm. When other fleeing policemen yelled to him that the truck was on fire he scrambled out and ran with them.

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With the sun blotted out by the dense smoke, the men groped their way along a hill by the light of exploding cars until they found a row of houses built into the hillside below. As Garcia and the policemen jumped down to the roof of the nearest house, one officer fell through the tiles to the floor below, breaking both legs. With the front entrance blocked by blazing oil, his comrades had to climb down through the hole, lift him back up to the roof and carry him from one rooftop to another.

At one point they were completely encircled by flames and smoke, not knowing which way to go.

“Panic began,” Garcia said. “One policeman put his revolver to his head, preparing to kill himself.”

Before he could pull the trigger something exploded, Garcia said. The brief flash of light illuminated a clear path to the sea.

The men jumped to another house, and then down to the beach.

Fire still surrounded them. Circling around the generating plant, they met a group of firefighters. The firefighters chopped a hole through a wall, allowing everyone to crawl to safety.

Some people survived by desperate ingenuity. Jose Marcano saved himself by breaking into a house and standing under the bathroom shower. Chemist Jesus Alberto Marquis sought refuge in the water clarification plant, which he knew to be safe because water flowed through its roof and walls.

“It is difficult to describe how fast things happened,” Marquis said. “With the burning rain, the heat and the blazing oil following each other only seconds apart, there was no time even to think of helping others.” Yet many people did. Marquis, himself, paused in the terrible heat to drag to safety a policeman who had collapsed of his burns. Other brave folks, whose names are not known, were seen staggering from the flames carrying people on their backs. Many died in the attempt to save others. Some were found still holding bodies in their arms.

Coordinated rescue attempts were possible only at the edge of the holocaust. At the landing dock, cafe owner Benjamin Tamakfin Frontado waited for the fiery rain to pass, then swam to a friend’s launch and made trip after trip through the flaming sea to pick up people struggling in the water. Some were so badly burned that the skin slipped from their arms when he pulled them aboard. He and his son are credited with saving more than 30 lives.

On the beach, the men of the police special brigade (Spt Brigada Especial de la Polica Metropolitana) plunged into the smoke to bring out more than 150 men, women and children who emerged from the flames like ghosts, their feet and legs so badly burned that most of them had to be carried. Pablo Jose Silva, 22, rescued seven victims before the soles of his heavy police boots burned through. One small boy’s hair was on fire when Silva found him.

Others he carried out were so horribly burned that the memory of them still causes him to wake at night in a cold sweat. Silva and one of his companions were later decorated for bravery.

The victims, numb with shock or moaning in pain, were loaded into ambulances, trucks and cars. Drivers raced out of the danger area at high speed to keep their tires from bursting on the smoking roads. In nearby hospitals, doctors and nurses worked around the clock to save as many patients as possible.

“It was the worst day I ever expect to live through,” said Nurse

Iris Salazar of the Jose Maria Vargas Hospital in La Guaira.

After the boilover, the burning oil flowed into the dike of Storage Tank 9. Several hours after the first blast, its contents ignited. Fortunately, it was a simple fire, with no boilover and no additional casualties. On Wednesday, three days after the fire had started, the last of the flames flickered out.

In terms of death and injuries the Tacoa disaster was the worst oil-storage fire in history. More than 150 people perished, including 53 firefighters, 14 electric-company workers, and ten journalists and TV crewmen. About 300 more people were burned or injured. Of the bodies found in the vicinity of the burning tank, many charred beyond recognition, most could be identified only by their dental work and the metal objects they wore. Some could not be identified at all. Even the fillings in their teeth had melted.

The remains of other people known to have been at the fire were never found. They either lie in the sea or were incinerated to ash.

Property losses reached more than $20 million. More than 60 vehicles and a helicopter were reduced to twisted heaps of melted metal. All that remained of the fire trucks were their asbestos hoses and the metal cleats of the firemens’ shoes. Some 70 homes burned down or were badly damaged.

The fire shocked Venezuela. While the ruins were still smoking, a national commission was appointed to investigate the causes of the disaster. The Electricdad de Caracas also commissioned the U.S. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) to conduct a further assessment of what went wrong at the Tacoa plant.

Fire experts are still trying to solve the two mysteries of the Tacoa fires — what started it and how the boilover occurred.

After the fire, it was said that the plant workers who climbed to the top of the tank might have forgotten to bring a flashlight, striking a match to illuminate the interior of the tank.

“But there’s no way that heavy oil vapor could possibly have been ignited by a match, unless the oil was heated to an abnormally high temperature, filling the air above it with combustible fumes,” Martin Henry, one of the NFPA investigators who visited the Tacoa plant, said. As to how, for the first time in history, sluggish fuel oil could boil over, he can offer even less explanation.

“Until this fire,” Henry said, “I would not have considered either event possible.”

It was ultimately determined that the heavy fuel had been blended from a wide selection of light ends. This led to the subsequent boilover.

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Latest research about preventing boilovers

Additives

in Crude Oil

Editor’s Note: In March, a contingent from authorities and companies working together to provide fire protection for the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands attended the annual Industrial Fire World Emergency Responder Conference and Exposition. In Rotterdam, all authorities and companies work together. This has resulted in the establishment of the Rotterdam Rijnmond Industrial Fire Response Unit. The organization has a steering committee, workgroup and work teams. They also have equipment which is suitable to extinguish full surface tank fires of storage tanks up to 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. At present, research is being carried out for the Industrial Fire Response Unit by Inburex Consulting, an independent international company providing services in many fields of industrial and process safety. This includes, explosion prevention and protection, fire safety, process safety, transport and storage Safety as well as safety management and various work in its own testing laboratory. In earlier research activities into the formation mechanisms of boilovers carried out by Dr. H.-G. Schecker and Dr. Broeckmann, whose PhD was in the field of heat transfer mechanisms and boilover in burning oil-water systems. There is a wide range of knowledge and experience in this field. Dr. Broeckmann and his co-workers are currently carrying out the research on the applicability of the new approach which is described in this article.

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n the chemical and petrochemical industries bulk quantities of flammable liquids, mostly raw and auxiliary materials, are stored. Fuels like oil or gasoline pose a specific threat due to their storage in large storage tanks. Fires at such storage tanks are uncommon but can happen and can cause extensive damage and considerable losses. So they represent a risk which should not be underestimated.

The worst case scenario of a full surface storage tank fire occurs when burning material is violently ejected from the tank due to the vaporization of a second phase liquid. Usually this second phase has a lower boiling point and a higher density than the bulk of the liquid stored in this tank. In general this second phase is a water layer at the bottom of the tank, which was either present during drilling or introduced during transport or the result 28

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of condensation. This effect is better known as boilover.

There are various studies and theories concerning the mechanisms causing this hazard. In general this effect could be summarized in this statement: During the fire heat accumulates in the oil and induces various processes, among other things, destabilization of the naturally occurring composition (W/O-emulsions, hydrocarbon fractions with a wide boiling range and hetero-azeotropic boiling points).

Due to this effect the original composition of the crude oil is changed by the way that the light ends are vaporized and burned at the surface during the fire. The loss of low boiling point components changes the composition of the fuel within the surface layer. The remaining fuel will not vaporize because of its high boiling points resulting in an increase temperature of the top surface layer. Heat convection causes an increase in temperature of the fuel layer below the top layer.

The result is a hot heavy oil fraction moving downwards to form a hot-zone. When this hot-zone reaches the accumulated water at the bottom of the tank, the water gets superheated and rapidly vaporizes. Due to this expansion of volume at the bottom of the tank the steam ejects from the tank over a wide distance, dragging burning liquids along in its path.

The objective of this research was to establish the best practices in the control and mitigation of boilovers from crude oil by means of stabilizing the composition of the crude oil during the fire by using additives.

Based upon a literature study potential options to control or mitigate the effects of a boilover using additives are presented.

The basic principle of this research is to investigate which mix of additives is suitable to create a thermically stable liquid with a high flashpoint in the crude oil of the storage tank on fire (thus prevention of the hot-zone formation).

The additives must be able to keep the original properties of the liquid in the storage tank under the rigid conditions throughout the full surface tank fire. These requirements are the key issues for selecting the appropriate additives. There are several parameters which influence the stabilization process.

The use of additives in crude oil to improve the flow behavior of the crude oil for its transport through pipelines, may also influence the properties of the additives. The effect the products used to influence the flow behavior have on the additives is still unknown.

The focus in this research is on the use of additives to control or prevent boilovers. Additives may sufficiently stabilize the thermically unstable contents of the storage tank with crude by forming a thermically stable liquid with a higher boiling point than the fractions had before the additives were present.

Contributing to this research are Jeanne van Buren, Industrial Fire Response Unit, Rotterdam-Rijnmond, The Netherlands; Ab de Moor, Chairman, Workgroup, Industrial Fire Response Unit, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Martin Gosewinkel, Inburex Consulting GmbH, Hamm/ Westf., Germany; Rene Dworschak, Inburex Consulting GmbH, Hamm/ Westf., Germany; Jens HĂśtger, Inburex Consulting GmbH, Hamm/ Westf., Germany and Dr. Bernd Broeckmann, Inburex Consulting GmbH, Hamm/ Westf., Germany.

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EMS CORNER

New EMS management text

By WILLIAM R. KERNEY, MA, EMTP (Ret.)/College of Southern Nevada ery few textbooks have been written with the EMS and potatoes of the topic, but that aside, it also seems as if some manager in mind. Some of those that have, left a lot to authors take a little leeway when it comes to the facts. This text be desired and many were not comprehensive enough to seems to be at least as accurate as the better ones in this arena really be useful when dealing with the big picture that is EMS and the attempt to feed the history lesson into the subject matter management. This latest addition into the foray is a much needed seems to work well. This is appreciated here and their overall and more wide-ranging book that will be useful, not only in the placement of EMS into the big governmental structure is well training of EMS managers, past, present, and future, but as a done, albeit a little wordy with all of the associations and resource for current managers looking to sharpen their abilities. organizations mentioned. Nevertheless, it covers the real rise to “Management of EMS” is published by Brady (Pearson federal attention from the beginning and the history lesson is Education; Upper Saddle River NJ) and was written by Bruce integrated and brief enough to not lose the reader who has “heard Evans, a current EMS Chief with 25 years experience, and Jeff it all” before. Nostalgia is not necessarily a bad thing.

The textbook includes such topics as strategic planning, risk Dyar, a former National Fire Academy (Emmitsburg) EMS Program management, and injury prevention that are very useful tools for Chair who has over 36 years experience.

Both of these quality individuals bring a plethora of experience the EMS manager, not just from a training standpoint but as a and background to the table and both have been players on the resource for ideas and a guide to avoiding pitfalls that can be national circuit for many years. Even with these fabulous anticipated. There is also a section about turning managers into credentials they give a product that is useful across the span of leaders. This portion is almost inspirational when the reader gets past the psychology of Maslow’s Hierarchy and dives into the wide-ranging topics that concern managers.

Every EMS text starts with a history lesson and this one is no communication techniques and the motivational aspects exception. In many ways, the History of EMS seems to be as associated with true leaders.

A large gap in manager training has been the concept of human important to us (why else would it be included?) as the real meat

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resources. While this may appear as a “dot the I’s and cross the T’s” chapter, real insight went into this section looking at it from a managerial standpoint. Many times people pass the buck to the HR department because “they are the professionals” when it comes to people, and others really never have a sound understanding of the process. Nowhere do managers get the insight of proper people management regarding motivation, support, coaching, and molding prospective and current personnel. This text overcomes many of these obstacles with some on-target discussions and also lays out some of the legal aspects that are essential to understanding the difference between workers’ rights and managerial responsibility when it comes to handling the most expensive asset, the people who are supervised. There are also subsequent chapters on career development, staff management, and labor relations that nicely follow the HR chapter and give further management techniques for utilizing and building (and often controlling) this precious asset.

There are two good chapters on fiscal management and fleet management, and any quality “protector of the purse” needs to be savvy in these matters.

Managers, EMS or not, have a daunting task of handling the budgets that are given to them (or they have to argue for), and they cannot be foolhardy with the nickels and dimes, as that is where the battle is most often lost.

The “fleet” chapter alone, with a little effort and ability, could save some major dollars with good planning and execution.

Spending so much on apparatus and equipment, rigorous fiscal conservatism can often make or break a service, whether or not it is private, municipal, governmental or industrial in focus. While much of the financial management chapter focused on billing and the like (not totally, but this may not be of interest to some non-billing services), the broad inclusion of the other chapters involving monetary planning and usage helps to balance the overall dialogue.

Some of the “obligatory” chapters are also included: quality management, education, special ops, and incident management; athe authors do not really disappoint in these areas. I especially liked some of the NIMS (National Incident Management System) discussion, and this is important when incidents arise in which federal agencies (particularly the DHS and the FBI) may take an interest. Remember that any incident may receive scrutiny as a possible “attack” scenario (especially large conflagrations and incidents where great amounts of life and property are lost), whether foreign or domestic. NIMS provides some of the framework for the interagency collaboration and requirements.

This section and discussion could have been longer and more

detailed, but I have that general feeling about the whole text. It could/should have been longer and I was a little surprised (given the number of real EMS management textbooks that are truly available) that several of the chapters were not much longer.

There was also very little about interfacing with law enforcement, and given the current state of the DHS, NIMS and ICS in general, a section on dealing with “all powerful” law enforcement agencies that may descend on an incident when the possibility or even the whisper of “terrorism” was spoken. They follow ICS with a good chapter on interagency relations and operations, but a real fleshing out of the pitfalls of the law enforcement encroachment (Can they really just take control?), on your incident and authority for the incident, might have been supportive for continuity.

The inclusion of the section on research was excellent for managers who are not really the “number crunchers” that they should be in this role. This is great reading for the supervisor who needs to justify capitol equipment expenditures using call volumes and demographics or just needs to track certain calls and issues internally. A brief discussion on satellite tracking is also included so managers that span vast geographic areas (possibly global operations) can track, via satellite, even apparatus movement. This at least shows the possibly, if not the reality, that is available with the current technology.

This is an excellent addition to the book arena and is long in coming. The readability of the material is not overly technical albeit the book is heavy with charts and graphs, but overall the information seems to flow within the text itself. That is the goal of an educational tool after all, to transfer the information from one to another. This text meets that goal and seems to hit all of its own objectives without issue. There is also substantial support for this work including related PowerPoints and instructor support from the publisher that is downloadable with the text usage (this is a big plus for educators and training directors that may need to integrate this material into their educational planning). This text will also meet some the requirements for the Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) training in EMS coming out of the National Fire Academy (i.e. Ops, QI, and Foundations). This National EMS Management Curriculum is in development and one of the authors of this work (Evans) is heavily involved with the development. This material is very welcomed and the addition of this text into the arsenal of tools for training can only help to bolster this curriculum.

“Management of EMS” (Evans/Dyar; ISBN-13:978-0-13232432-8; Brady Publishing; Pearson Education) is out now.

Check out this *NEW* text for your training needs. This is good quality material.

C

It is the goal of an educational tool after all to transfer the information from one to another. This text meets that goal and seems to hit all of its own objectives without issue.

MAY-JUNE 2009

31

RISK ASSESSMENT

Exterior insulation & finishing

Anatomy of an exterior insulation and finishing system

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s a result of a few recent fires that have started on or involved the exterior of the building, a number of them have been blamed on the use of an exterior insulation and finishing systems (EIFS), a building technique to provide building insulation and architectural ornamentation. While the exact material ignited in the most recent casino fire has not been determined, chances are that a listed EIFS was not the cause of the extensive fire spread. This article will address this issue. EIFS was developed originally to insulate existing buildings without disrupting or losing interior space. The insulating material is installed over the exterior wall of the building, then covered with a finish coat material. EIFS were developed in Europe in the 1940s after World War II, then used in the U.S. and Canada in the 1960s and proliferated in the mid-1970s during the oil embargo.

When EFIS were developed the insulating material was mineral wool; now-a-days expanded polystyrene with a low flame spread is used. Older EIFS used a Portland cement finish coat covering where today’s covering can be either polymer based (PB EIFS) or polymer modified (PM EIFS) material. Originally, the system was only installed on masonry units where today it can be installed on drywall, plywood or masonry units. Originally, the assembly was only field installed. Today it can be fabricated and transported to the site in sections. Today, these systems can be used to refurbish existing masonry walls and build exterior walls on lowrise buildings as well as curtain walls on high-rise buildings.

The architects like to use EFIS because architectural features such as columns and decorative attachments can be created rather easily at a low cost. The finish coat can be made to look like poured concrete, concrete blocks, bricks or anything the architect wants. As such, it is difficult to see the difference between concrete blocks, concrete, or EIFS. This is where the problem lies. There are other materials that are fabricated to look like concrete and other non-combustible material when these base materials and coatings are combustible. Polyurethane foam can be shaped and coated to look like these non-combustible materials, but is combustible.

When EIFS were first used here in North America, there was 32

INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

By PETER WILLSE/XL GLOBAL ASSET PROTECTION one company making them. Today there are over 25 companies making the components and many other suppliers and certified contractors installing them. Today there are a lot of companies who claim to install an EIFS system, but instead of using firetested components, they use polyurethane-coated material or unapproved products. A listed EIFS would be subjected to fire testing in accordance with: • National Fire Protection Association (NFPA 285) Standard Fire Test Method for Evaluation of Fire Propagation Characteristics of Exterior Non-Load-Bearing Wall Assemblies Containing Combustible Components (which is the old Uniform Building Code’s Standard 26-9; known as the intermediate scale multi-story test).

• NFPA 268, Standard Test Method for Determining Ignitibility of Exterior Wall Assemblies Using a Radiant Heat Energy Source (which is the old Building Officials and Code Administrators Standard 905).

• Uniform Building Code Standard 26-4, Method of Test for Evaluation of Flammability Characteristics of Exterior, Nonloadbearing Wall Panel Assemblies Using Foam Plastic Insulation (also know as the full scale multi-story test).

Additionally, the expanded polystyrene insulation must have an ASTM E 84 Standard Test Method for Surface Burning Characteristics of Building Materials flame spread of less than 25.

These requirements come from the ICC Evaluation Services evaluation report number AC 181 acceptance criteria for rigid cellular polyurethane panels used as exterior and interior wall cladding. In a tested and listed system, if the heat were to get to the expanded polystyrene insulation, the polystyrene material would melt (not burn) back to a point where the heat from the fire was below the melting point of polystyrene which is 465°F. Case history has shown that when a fire started in a non-EFIS ornamentation on a building, the fire spread until it reached the listed EIFS and stopped.

UBC 26-4 test set-up

NFPA 268 test set-up

The UBC 26-4 fire test is a full-scale test. The set-up consists of a two-story, 24 feet high building with two rooms. Two of the walls are built from concrete block and the floors and ceilings are reinforced concrete. The other two walls have the test sample secured to it. The sample has a four foot by eight foot opening in

EIFS sample subjected to the UBC 26-4 test. one wall. A 1,285 pound wood crib is placed three ft from the back wall, centered on the wall. The test is run for 30 minutes. The assembly is considered acceptable if flames do not propagate over the surface of the sample beyond the immediate area of crib flame impingement, flames do not propagate vertically or laterally through the insulation, and flames do not enter the second floor room.

The NFPA 268 test consists of a four foot by eight foot sample mounted on a stand and exposed to a three foot by three foot radiant panel. A heat shield is held between the sample and the radiant panel until the panel is brought up to 12.5 kW/m² (kilowatt of energy per square meter). Once at the testing temperature, the shield is lifted and the test begins. The test lasts for 20 minutes unless there is sustained flaming (ignition) for a period greater than five seconds. If the flaming lasts more than five seconds, the heat shield is brought down and the test is terminated.

So how do you know if you have a concrete, EIFS or some other material for a wall that looks like concrete? It is difficult at best. Ask the building owners. If the facility has the construction drawings and specification, the information would be listed on them. If the building department keeps a record of the construction details, it would be on them.

If the owner does not know and the drawings, specifications and records are unavailable, look for tell-tale signs that it could be an EIFS system. EIFS systems stop short of the ground level to allow the system to drain and prevent deterioration. Look at high trafficked areas such as around doorways to see if there is any damage to the material; if mesh is showing, there is a good chance the system is an EIFS. Once you find out who manufactured the system, check with the company to see if the

Akron Brass issues cord reel recall

A

kron Brass has issued a voluntary recall for manual and portable cord reels manufactured before Oct. 17, 2008, with a part number preceded with “ECR-.” The reels represent a remote potential for electric shock due to an ungrounded metal frame. The units should be returned to Akron Brass for retrofit. This recall does not pertain to any electric reels mounted to apparatus or non-live cord reels.

For more information, visit www.akronbrass.com/recall. C

system is listed or check with Exterior Insulation Manufactures Association (EIMA) to see if they can help. If the material on the wall does not have the finish coat or the mesh, most likely it is a combustible material.

If you have a building under construction and an EIFS is planned, verify the system is tested per the requirements in the ICC Evaluation Services Evaluation Report number AC 181. If the system is field installed, the components and containers should be labeled. If the panels are manufactured in a shop visit the shop to check the material. If work has to be conducted on existing EIFS, the work should be in accordance with the EIMA Guide To Exterior Insulation and Finish System Construction available at http://www.eima.com/technicaltools/eifsconstruction guidelines. This guide covers plumbing and electrical penetrations and installations.

Part two of this article will address actions to take for nonlisted finishing systems as well as tactical considerations during a fire involving non-listed systems.

C Peter Willse, P.E., FSFPE is with XL GAPS, a leading loss prevention services provider and a member of the XL Capital group. “XL Insurance” is the global brand used by member insurers of the XL Capital Ltd (NYSE: XL) group of companies.

More information about XL Insurance and its products is available at www.xlinsurance.com. XL Capital Ltd, through its operating subsidiaries, is a leading provider of global insurance and reinsurance coverages to industrial, commercial and professional service firms.

Fire Fighters Tool Company 5th Annual John Gill Southwest CAFS Symposium March 2010 ICL Performance Products Phos-Chek Class A Foam Concentrate provides superior foam generation at 0.1-1% use concentration. It is a U.L. listed wetting agent at 0.25% use rate effective on Class A & B combustibles.

Call

Angela Gill 281.799.1122 (Cell) 281.391.0588 (Office) 281.391.1593 (Fax) 5150 Franz Road Katy, Texas 77493 afiretool@aol.com MAY-JUNE 2009

33

FOCUS ON HAZMAT

Foams, froth and concentrates

F

oam, like many other innovations within the realm of firefighting paraphernalia, came about in response to a perceived need. In this case it was the need for a method of extinguishing liquid hydrocarbon fires which in turn were caused by the need to store large quantities of motor fuel in the community, and this was engendered by the advent of the motor car and its internal combustion engine.

To have a fire one must have the “Fire Triangle” — heat, fuel and oxygen (or an equivalent oxidizer). Remove any one of these and out goes the fire. Foam can eliminate all of these; it can separate the fire from the fuel, it can shut out atmospheric oxygen and it is an excellent heat shield.

Foam is, in the final analysis, a fairly simple creation. It consists of water, a wetting agent and air. The earliest commercially produced foams were exactly that, soap suds. These early foams were supplied as two powders (“A” and “B,” naturally) one was sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) or baking soda and powdered soap (Grandma’s famous lye type). In some formulations, sodium carbonate (Na2CO3 ) or washing soda was employed instead of the baking soda. The other powder was alum or hydrated aluminum potassium sulfate (KAl(SO4)2.12H2O) though the sodium salt can also be used as can aluminum sulfate (AL2 (SO4) 3 which is commonly, though incorrectly, referred to as “alum.”

Saponin and licorice were often included to stabilize the bubbles.

In practice the two powders were fed into an in-line mixing device similar in principle and function to the present day in-line eductors used for liquid foam concentrates. As the powders were mixed with water, the chemical reaction set in with CO2 being liberated and the soap or other wetting agent being dissolved.

As the fluid moved down the hose line the constituents mixed and the liberated gas became trapped in the fluid much as does the gas in a cold drink can. When the fluid arrived at the nozzle, the confining pressure was released and the entrained gas began to expand on the way to the fire and the stream struck the flames as finished foam rather than as a liquid.

This foam, introduced during the final decade of the 19th century was simple to make and cheap to produce; alum is a common water treating reagent, soda, washing or baking, is a common industrial material and soap was a household commodity.

The main problem with this type of foam was that it was a hygroscopic powder and such powders tend to clump during storage, especially in damp climates. No one was ever able to come up with a thoroughly reliable automated system for using these foams to protect large installations such as refineries or tank yards; even after the foam was reformulated into a single powder. The problem was not in the efficacy of the foam but limitations of mechanical reliability. As a result, in the 1940s these foams were supplanted by the more dependable pump and pipe systems that used liquid foam concentrates. Soaps and detergents can make very effective fire fighting foams. One of the best high 34

INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

By DR. JOHN S. TOWNSEND expansion concentrates around for use on hydrocarbon fires is a commercial dishwashing formulation.

In the 1940s Percy Lavon Julian developed a foam concentrate based on protein hydrolysates, originally from soy but later employing animal proteins derived from slaughter house wastes.

This foam was stabilized by the addition of formaldehyde and/or a high molecular weight glycol. It was messy, it had a horrific odor, especially in the case of the versions derived from slaughterhouse by products but it did and does work for general use on hydrocarbon fires as well as Class “B” fires.

This was the first in a line of protein based foams; it was followed in the early 1960s by fluoroprotein and shortly thereafter by aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF).

The main problem with the protein based foam agents is that of “protein denaturation” by non-polar solvents such as alcohols.

The solution of this problem was the addition of metallic stearates to the foam concentrates. The result was AR (Alcohol Resistant) or ATC (Alcohol Type Concentrate) and later by the AR AFF concentrates though, in most cases, this latter derives its resistance to non-polar substances through means other than the presence of metallic stearates.

The mechanisms by which the two types of foams are formed differ. Chemical foams depended on the reduction of the surface tension of water by the wetting agent and the production of carbon dioxide by the reaction of the sodium bicarbonate with the alum (an acidic salt). The gas evolved then aerates the soap solution to produce the finished foam. The liquid concentrates, on the other hand, produce foam by being mixed with atmospheric air in the same way as egg whites are foamed to make meringue dessert toppings and depend on the formation of long chain polymeric molecules, usually proteinaceous in nature, to produce bubbles. The foam produced is simply the result of entraining air in the mixture of concentrate and water and agitating the mixture as it exits the nozzle. There is no chemical reaction analogous to that found in the formation of chemical foams.

The aerated foams are usually heavier than the chemical foams and the blankets they produce tend to last longer. This is due to the entwining of the polymeric chains to form a mat-like matrix over the surface of the burning liquid. This property has been carried to the extreme in the case of the AFFF concentrates wherein the polymer chains form an actual membrane over the liquid surface, effectively isolating the fuel from oxygen. It also prevents, or at least reduces, incidents of “flashback” or rekindle.

Foams are chemical substances but their action is mechanical.

They act, as mentioned previously, by isolating the fuel from the oxidizer (normally the atmosphere) and they absorb heat, thus reducing the rate of vaporization of fuel. How they do this is of less importance than that it is accomplished. “Foams are Foams,” and once the foam is generated and applied to the surface of the burning liquid if it forms a blanket which puts out the fire, absorbs

heat and isolates the fuel supply it really makes no difference whether the foam is protein, AR, AFFF or even chemical. The mode of application also makes very little difference; high expansion, subsurface injection, in-line aspirated or compressed air foam once they are on the surface of a burning liquid will, if present in sufficient quantities and in the absence of an adverse reaction with the fuel, effect extinguishment.

The problem is of course getting the foam on the fire and forming and maintaining a blanket once it gets there. Foam is a very light material and propelling it over any significant distance is difficult. The problem is similar to that encountered when one tries to throw a “nerf” ball around the house. These balls are so light and the mass is so dispersed that it is almost impossible to throw them hard enough to do any significant damage. This is explained in the equation F = MA, where F stands for force, M denotes mass and A is acceleration. If M is very small then A must be extremely large in order to generate an “F” large enough to carry a foam any significant distance, then too, the surface area of finished foam is so great that wind conditions can sometimes render it ineffective, especially high expansion foams.

The solution to this problem is to have, in conventional foam systems, the foam solution exit the nozzle as a liquid containing entrained air under pressure. As this fluid leaves the nozzle, its mass (M) is concentrated enough so that a moderate pressure (F) can accelerate it to a degree which enables it to span a considerable distance. This is exactly what happens when one squirts a stream from a beverage can. The beverage leaves the container as a liquid, and as it flies through the air toward the objective, the entrained gas expands so that by the time the stream hits the target the liquid has been transformed into foam.

Since this expansion takes place within the generator before the finished foam is ejected, high expansion foams have almost no range and must be applied directly onto the fire. This can be demonstrated even more graphically by means of an aerosol container of shaving cream. When the valve is opened the liquid with its entrained and/or dissolved gas is released through the small hole in the nozzle. Immediately upon escaping from the confines of the dispenser the stream expands into a foam which is much larger in dimension than the opening in the package.

Subsurface injection systems offer another illustration of this.

When the foam solution (Water, Air and Foam Concentrate) is injected at the bottom of a tank of fluid, it is a liquid and the hydrostatic pressure of the tank contents tends to keep it in that state. However, as it begins to rise toward the surface this pressure decreases and the entrained air begins to expand. By the time the solution reaches the surface, it is a foam and will spread over the burning liquid effecting extinguishment. A transparent demonstration tank reveals an elongated cone of foam starting at the injection nozzle and expanding as it rises until it emerges at the surface as an expanding blanket of foam.

Foams have always done what they were meant to do; namely put out fires on burning liquids. The early chemical foams did this very well so long as there were no mechanical problems with stoppages due to caking. The regular protein foams worked equally well. The problem arose when new developments in chemistry introduced large quantities of non-polar solvents into

the market place. This problem has recently been exacerbated by the introduction of ethanol (ethyl alcohol C2H5OH) into motor fuel. Due to the denaturation of the proteins in their formulations, the older foams just do not work with these fuels. The answer to this need was, of course, found in the various “alcohol type” concentrates and the AR AFFF foams currently in use. Given that research for new products continues, it is not unlikely that we will see the introduction of new materials into the market place and into the transportation stream of general commerce that will in turn require the development of new types of foams for use in combating fires involving these materials.

It is not impossible that at some point there will be a return of the chemical foam concept. These foams had two characteristics which are lacking in the air aspirated foams which now predominate the field. In the first place, there was no protein in the chemical foams, hence there would be no denaturation of protein and consequent degradation of the foam. Secondly, the foam would be blown with carbon dioxide, a non-flammable gas which itself finds use as a fire suppressant, rather than air which, of course, contains oxygen. This would make such a foam more effective on fires involving hypergolic or pyrophoric materials such as aluminum alkyls or ethylene oxide.

Foams have another property which, until fairly recently, has generally been overlooked; they expand available water. If one has a tanker containing 1,000 gallons of water, he can sustain a stream of 100 gallons per minute for only ten minutes. But if he expands that water 100 times by making it into foam, he multiplies his fire suppression capability at least 100 times and perhaps more since the foam will stay put rather than running off or being absorbed by the substrate. This has a decided impact on tanker supplied operations especially in the case of wild land fires or those occurring in suburban areas where development has stretched ahead of fire main construction thus requiring tanker supplied operations. Foam wet lines which can quickly be established from moving apparatus have proven very effective in controlling and combating wildland fires.

Foams have also proven effective for inerting confined spaces such as overturned tank trailers or other containment or process vessels. Foam will stay put in these applications in spite of any small cracks or fissures that may be present in the vessel. Also foam is visible, viewers can tell where it is and is not. When carbon dioxide is used as an inerting agent, there is no indication of its location, how full the space in question actually is or the concentration of the inerting agent present. Not so with foam.

We can see it and thus determine just how much of the void has been filled. We can be sure that our inerting agent has not leaked away or been diluted due to the action of gaseous diffusion.

Also, determine when additional foam should be added, advantages that should not go unnoticed.

Fire fighting foam has evolved in parallel with evolving needs; from the simple soap suds that extinguished the early gasoline fires to the complex chemical matrices that smother giant tank fires involving a variety of chemicals. Whatever new materials may emerge from the laboratories of our ingenious chemists, it is reasonable to expect that other equally talented researchers will devise an equally efficacious foam to control them.

C MAY-JUNE 2009

35

INDUSTRIAL SERVICE DIRECTORY CAFS FIRE FIGHTER TOOL CO. 5150 Franz Road Katy, TX 77493 281/391-0588 • Fax 281/391-1593 CONSULTING/TRAINING EMERGENCY SERVICES TRAINING 600 Marina Drive Beaumont, TX 77701 409/833-BEST • Fax 409/833-2376 CHUBB LOSS CONTROL UNIVERSITY “Hands On” Fire Protection Training • Sprinklers Activated, Fire Pumps and More Sam Lee 908/903-7172 www.chubb.com/lu

FIRE APPARATUS PIERCE MANUFACTURING 2600 American Dr. Appleton, WI 54913 920/832-3231 • www.piercemfg.com SUTPHEN CORPORATION P.O. Box 0158 Amlin, OH 43002 800/848-5860 FIRE APPARATUS HARDWARE HARRINGTON, INC. 2630 West 21st St. Erie, PA 16506 • 800/553-0078 814/838-3957 • Fax 814/838-7339

FIRE & SAFETY SPECIALISTS INC. P.O. Box 9161 College Station, TX 77842 979/690-7559 • Fax 979/690-7562 TASK FORCE TIPS, INC. Valparaiso, IN 46383 • 800/348-2686 sales@tft.com • www.tft.com “An American Owned Company.”

INDUSTRIAL FIRE TRAINING CONSULTANTS P.O. Box 17947 • Nashville, TN 37217-0947 615/793-5400 • iftcfire@iftcfire.com www.iftcfire.com

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Ferrara Fire Apparatus, Inc. Holden, Louisiana Toll Free 800/443-9006 www.ferrarafire.com

36

INDUSTRIAL FIRE WORLD

TASK FORCE TIPS, INC. Valparaiso, IN 46383 • 800/348-2686 sales@tft.com • www.tft.com “An American Owned Company.”

WILLIAMS FIRE & HAZARD CONTROL P.O. Box 1359 Mauriceville, TX 77626 409/727-2347 • Fax 409/745-3021 FOAM PUMPS

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LSU FIRE & EMERGENCY CONSULTANTS 6868 Nicholson Drive Baton Rouge, LA 70820 800/256-3473 • Fax 225/765-2416 http://feti.lsu.edu • Ltu1996@lsu.edu

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FOAMPRO-HYPRO 375 Fifth Ave. N.W. New Brighton, MN 55112 651/766-6300 • 800/533-9511 • Fax 651/766-6614

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TASK FORCE TIPS, INC. Valparaiso, IN 46383 • 800/348-2686 sales@tft.com • www.tft.com “An American Owned Company.”

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Visit the IFW Store at www.fireworld.com

WV plant explosion blamed on thermal runaway reaction

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large explosion and fire that took the lives of two workers at the Bayer CropScience (Bayer) plant last August was caused by a thermal runaway reaction during the production of an insecticide. The event likely resulted from significant lapses in chemical process safety management at the plant, U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators said in preliminary findings released in April.

The blast on August 28, 2008 in Institute, WV, occurred as the runaway reaction created extremely high heat and pressure in a vessel known as a residue treater, which ruptured and flew about 50-feet through the air, demolishing process equipment, twisting steel beams, and breaking pipes and conduits. Two operators died as a result.

Eight workers reported symptoms of chemical exposure, including aches and intestinal and respiratory distress,

including two employees of the Norfolk Southern railway company and five Tyler Mountain, West Virginia volunteer firefighters, and an Institute, West Virginia volunteer firefighter. Two sought treatment at a hospital emergency room the next day, were treated, and released.

Releasing preliminary findings, CSB Board Chairman John Bresland said, “Our investigation is continuing, but we are here to brief the community about what we know at this point.”

“The explosion at Bayer was a very serious and tragic event that could have had additional grave consequences.

There were significant lapses in the plant’s process safety management, including inadequate training on new equipment and the overriding of critical safety systems necessitated by the fact the unit had a heater that could not produce the required temperature for safe operation,” he said.

C MAY-JUNE 2009

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