Fire, water & pollution
Published: 01 April, 2006
Almost four months ago, the fuels depots at Buncefield near Hemel Hempstead represented the UK’s fifth largest fuel distribution centres, used by BP, BPA and HOSL ( a joint venture between Total and Texaco. On December 11th, 2005, a severe explosion led to the loss of around 7.7 million gallons of oil, motor spirit and aviation fuel.
A professional, well-known as one of the world’s leading independent fire hazard management consultants, Dr Niall Ramsden was onsite within five hours of ignition and remained there for 28 hours, returning later to see the final extinguishment.
With his experience dealing with industry fires and as an active member of the USA-based National Fire Protection Association and the European EU committees for foam application standards, he was able to provide essential advice on how much foam would be needed to start extinguishing actions and potential sources of it.
He is currently MD of Resource Protection International, an internationally-respected consultancy company directly involved with the LASTFIRE tank protection programme.
This is an industry project involving 17 oil companies collecting and analysing data on storage tank fires. Niall Ramsden takes up the story.
Neil Ramsden’s story
“I live approximately 20 miles from the Buncefield site and for me it began just after 6 am on Sunday, December 11th, when I was woken by a loud noise sounding like a massive car crash just outside the house. It was, in fact, the ignition and blast, audible up to 100 miles away, which had happened at the UK’s Buncefield Depot near Hemel Hempstead.
“At 0730 I received a call from an industry friend and colleague, Kevin Westwood, recently appointed as Group Fire Adviser by BP, who knew that I would be interested to hear about the incident that was now headline news on the 24 hour news channels. After calling other industry colleagues such as Richard Coates and Arnie Arnold of BP, I left to attend the Gold Command briefing at Welwyn Garden City,” he explains.
“From there I was escorted to Bronze Command at the incident site. During my drive to Gold, I received phone calls from Turkey and Hungary about the incident - which clearly shows how much worldwide media interest there is in big incidents and how quickly the news is spread!”
He explains: “As I approached Buncefield it was obvious by the smoke plume that a large area was on fire - not just a single tank. By the time I arrived on site - around 11am - the Fire Brigade had set up its Command Post and was well on the way to developing strategies for their response and industrial firefighters with specialised large throughput application equipment were on their way .
“I was shown the police helicopter photographs which had been taken around 2 hours earlier - showing many tanks on fire and a large bund area also fully alight. ‘Live’ footage of the fire showed that much of the bund fire had already burned itself out “
The initial philosophy of the firefighting teams arriving on site - firefighters from 16 brigades - was to isolate and depressurise the facilities, tanks and pipelines and to cool everything exposed to the fire with monitors or by handlines. Their job was to contain the fire and prevent any escalation of the incident.
The first steps
“The two major requirements for any tank fire are having sufficient foam stocks and maintaining an effective and appropriate application rate. Although this incident was not one that would normally be preplanned but the Fire Brigade undoubtedly showed their strength in logistical expertise, organising the water and foam supplies.” Niall says.
The fire teams knew that the rapid application of an adequate amount of water to exposed structures was essential. Experience has shown that after the first 20 minutes of a serious fire the structural steelwork begins to fail.
“Drainage is another important issue - firefighters have to prevent the area becoming flooded. If flooding happens then liquid fires can spread rapidly because the refined hydrocarbon fluids have a lower density than water.”
The firefighting operation at Buncefield was the responsibility of CFO Roy Wilsher of Hertfordshire - and, in the final analysis, this incident proved to the experts that successful firefighting operations could be achieved by blending the specialist expertise of heavy industry and its industrial fire equipment with the logistical capability of a local authority fire brigade.
As Niall Ramsden puts it: “Municipal and industrial fire teams working side-by-side effectively combined their skills to extinguish the fires.”
As far as equipment was concerned, a large capacity industrial monitor (Williams Six Gun), Large Diameter Hose and a bulk foam unit arrived from the Essex Fire Brigade who also provide a nucleus of eight officers. A Williams PATRIOT II large capacity monitor also came from ICI Wilton. Twelve high volume pumps, hose and extra concentrate had to be brought in from other areas to sustain the fire attack.
At Buncefield most of the existing water reserves were regarded as unusable due to water main rupture and proximity to the fire. Tapping a large-scale alternative source was one of the many logistical problems which had to be overcome.
What was needed was large capacity pumping equipment, alternative water supplies, and sufficient foam reserves to prevent supplies running out.
The fire services were able to assemble a sufficiently-good pumping capacity thanks to a programme - the New Dimensions package - which provided large pumps to deal with a terrorist threat.
There were 14 Kuiken Hytrans pumps (HVPs) at Buncefield, each pumping 7,000 l/min used at Buncefield. Each of these has a remote hydraulic drive which allows the pump to be immersed in the supply source. This neatly solves the priming requirement and ensures the intake will be clear of sludge. These pumps were used extensively at Buncefield and at flooding in Carlisle in 2005 where they saved the day.
The biggest problem was water
The response teams found themselves extremely short of resources when they first arrived at the site: Buncefield’s emergency water system had been destroyed in the initial blast and subsequent fire and most of its active firefighting equipment had been damaged beyond repair.
Some of the Buncefield water sources were located a long way off; in one case water had to be pumped from a lake a mile away. The equivalent of 30 fire engine loads per minute was being pumped by the fire brigade from a nearby pond and there were realistic fears it would be drained dry by the operations. Afterwards there was enough waste-water runoff generated to fill the equivalent of 90 Olympic-sized swimming pools - that’s around 30 million litres of waste water/runoff produced.
Niall reports: “There had been some criticism that insufficient thought was given to industrial incidents in the overall specification of the pumping package, but it certainly proved useful, indeed essential, at Buncefield.”
Lesson learned
The Buncefield incident will no doubt raise and highlight a number of important lessons, says Dr Ramsden. “Obviously it is too early to be definitive about the cause of the incident - investigations are ongoing - but there will undoubtedly be a review of prevention and incident detection systems at such facilities.
“Secondly, a more formalised system of co-operation between municipal brigades and industry would have reduced inevitable time delays early on in the incident,” he argues.
“In future, industry may have to think about different strategies which might include controlled burndown of tank fires in situations similar to Buncefield. The Environment Agency has published a document on this subject in the past which will, no doubt, be revisited.”
Buncefield has put the spotlight on the environmental aspects of a major industrial incident, Niall says. Others might consider it unreasonable to use such large qualities of foam at any future incident although some foams now coming into the market and establishing a performance record will help alleviate this problem. The Buncefield depot fire will provide an object lesson in such environmental considerations as the use of foam and the containment & treatment of firewater runoff.”
“Finally,” says Niall: “Data from Buncefield should add significantly to the LASTFIRE project. Its causes and the fire response will be fully analysed, with all the member companies having an input.“One ‘deliverable’ from the LASTFIRE study has been a protocol for a fire performance test specifically aimed at the unique circumstances of a tank fire,” comments Niall.
The LASTFIRE test is the world’s first ever foam test designed by oil companies themselves to simulate these conditions. Every aspect of the test is designed to reproduce the way foams are applied in real life, and to subject their performance to the most rigorous scrutiny. “The Buncefield incident clearly shows that major fires require the best equipment and the most effective fire fighting agents - the foams that performed best have shown good results in the test series carried out to date, so the protocol is certainly validated. “ concludes Niall Ramsden.
