There is nothing like the real thing
Published: 01 April, 2006
Gene Allen is a Senior Loss Prevention Engineer for major Insurance and Risk Assessment company Allianz. He has a close affiliation with the industrial firefighting industry through his work and his spare-time occupation as a volunteer firefighter.
He travels to petrochemical facilities all over the world to assess safety and health issues. In his opinion sound engineering and design, good management and a well-trained and experienced firefighting force are the basis of a safe facility.
However, he feels very concerned about the level of training many staff members now receive. Due to pressures on the government to reduce CO2 emissions real ‘hands on’ training on oil fires is under threat.
In the US you can still exercise in some establishments, These schools are however under a lot of pressure from the government to stop providing this sort of training because of environmental concerns.
Overwhelmed
“What plants now do is to use the ‘board’ to project the hazards and predict strategy during onsite training. The team goes out on the facilities’ terrain and practices with the nozzles and they roll out hoses. In addition to that they might train on propane simulators, which are at the facility.
However, when a real incident does occur the appearance of a hydrocarbon fire can overwhelm crews. They just do not have anything in common with the propane simulators they are used to training on. People panic. They think: ‘What to do next?’ and ‘I have to get away from it, because of the heat’. It is perfectly possible to stand close to the fire with the right PPE. They are not used to the fire and they will probably never see another one again. Basically there is no learning curve,” explains Gene.
For instance, most students have learned all about mixing foam in the classroom. When actually confronted with an incident they have no idea about amounts and measures and how to mix it properly.
“If you have never performed a task before, how are you supposed to do it right? Firefighting is an extremely mechanical profession. In my opinion you have to train as much as you can and as close to the real life situation as you can,” argues Gene.
Gene feels that many petrochemical facilities spend considerable amounts of money on an emergency plan for every single storage tank and facility, despite the fact that they might all be designed in exactly the same way.
“All this overspecifying is done to satisfy the government’s need to have a piece of paper for everything. The real-life situation gets neglected and this is happening more and more.
“The NFPA 11 for low medium and high expansion foam does not specify where foam protection is needed, for instance. The book tells you to monitor the sorts and amount of foam you use and which standards to consider, but unless you really go out there and practice, you will never be able to put that theory in to action.”
He feels that facility personnel were much more experienced 30 years ago, because operators let their staff practice with onsite hydrocarbon fires on a regular basis.
“People were really experienced because they actually had the opportunity to train - now - because of pollution regulations, we can’t do that anymore. In the end the pollution is very small, but the paper pushers want it this way. Firefighting schools that do provide hydrocarbon fire training are under a significant amount of pressure and, before long, we will not be able to practice on real hydrocarbon fires there either,” he concludes.
