Incidents Texas City

Some events are sufficiently serious as to justify making recommendations throughout the industry for example, an incident involving a highly hazardous catalyst could lead to a recommendation that new technology—one which uses a much less hazardous catalyst— is needed. A weU-known example of an industry-wide recommendation occurred following release of the Baker report to do with the explosion at a Texas City refinery (Baker, 2007). The persons who died were all working in temporary trailers. Within a very short period of time, most other refineries had removed trailers that were within their battery limits. 

March 23, 2005, Texas City, TX. Explosions and fires occurred at the BP refinery. The incident killed 15 people and injured 180 others. The financial loss was more than 1.5 billion. (See also Case 9-3.)... 

The March 2005 Texas City, Texas, refinery incident -the most tragic US refinery accident of the decade... 

In hindsight, a poor Safety Culture is an apparent overarching contributor to the Texas City Incident. A number of specific CSB key findings supported that allega-tioa It is necessary to understand the level, depth, and detail of this comprehensive... 

This concludes the brief treatment of the BP Texas City disaster. For additional information see the 374-page skillfiilly developed and pubhshed Baker Report. Please also review a later chapter in this text entitled A Strong Safety Culture is Essential. A quick review of the Baker Report will make ai one a believer of the strength and value of safety culture. dewing the excellent CSB deo of this tragic incident entitled Anatomy of a Disaster Explosion at BP Texas City Refinery is a must. It is also beneficial to read the CSB s Executive Smmnary Report on this tragedy. 

U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board. Anatomy of a disaster, a 56 minute DVD on the BP Texas City incident. Available on CSB website, March 2008. 

Fatal Accident Investigation Report - isomerization unit explosion, interim report Texas City, Texas, Incident March 23, 2005. Date of Report May 12, 2005, http //www.root-causelive.com/Files/Past%20Investigations/BP%20Explosion/texas city investigation report.pdf [accessed 17.09.14]. 

Human and organizational faetors are also important and these were addressed in Recommendations 19-22. Recommendation 19 provided key characteristics of high reliability organizations. They eehoed the discussions in the Baker Report on the BP Texas City incident and CSB reports which covered that 2005 incident (see previous chapter). Finally, Recommendations 23-25 dealt with broader strategic objectives relating to sector leadership and safety culture, essential to ensure continuing progress [9],... 

Over the past 30 years, a number of incidents have occurred that have quietly changed the chemical processing industry forever. Incidents such as those in Bhopal, Alaska (the Exxon Valdez o spill), and Texas City (involving BP) have made us aware of the potential for catastrophic events... 

It is easier to write about a culture that includes safety as a core value than it is to factually describe a situation in which the culture deteriorates over time, the effect the deterioration has on increasing risk and the position in which such deterioration places a safety professional. The following are excerpts taken from a report that was internally produced by BP Products North America (2005) pertaining to a fire and explosion that occurred on March 23,2005, at an owned and operated refinery in Texas City, Texas. As a result of that incident, 15 people were killed and over 170 were harmed. It is important to note that these excerpts, taken from the Executive Summary— Fatal Accident Investigation Report, represent a self-evaluation. 

John Mogford, at the time senior group vice president, safety operations, for BP, conceded this blind spot in 2006 in his speech to the Center for Chemical Process Safety, 2nd Global Congress on Process Safety Do not get seduced by personal accident measures they have their place but do not warn of incidents (Editor s note such as the BP Texas City refinery explosion). There is a need to capture the right metrics that indicate process safety trends. ... 

The recent Texas City and Buncefield incidents have moved industry and regulators beyond the pure science and engineering responses to develop ways to prevent a recurrence. They have caused us to also critically examine the leadership issues associated with delivering what has to be excellent operation and maintenance of high-hazard processes. 

Phillips Pasadena (1989), BP Texas City (2005), Buncefield, UK (2005), Puerto Rico (2009), and Deepwater Horizon/British Petroleum (2010) have aU amply demonstrated the loss of life, property damage, extreme financial costs, environmental impact, and the impact to an organization s reputation that these incidents can produce. 

Crane access is usually required for most process areas to support periodic maintenance activities, replace worn equipment, and support possible upgrades and expansions. The step up and use of cranes requires large areas for their utilization, therefore it is incumbent during a plant design to account for such use where this is expected to occur. The lifting of objects over operating plants should be avoided as the load could be dropped, which has occurred in the past and led to a major hydrocarbon incident (i.e., dropped crane load on a vessel in refinery, 1987,Texas City,Texas). 

Sharing of past major incidents with other oil and gas industries provides useful input data for similar process industries in order to identify the most critical barriers and improve their safety processes. One poignant example highlights this matter. In 1998 there was an accident in the gas compression stage of a Middle East oil and gas plant which caused 7 dead as a result of fuel accumulation and vapor cloud explosion which was very similar to the Texas City Refinery disaster on March 23, 2005 in which a distillation tower was overfilled and an uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons led to a major explosion and fires. Fifteen people were killed and 180 were injured in the worst disaster in the United States in a decade. In both incidents, excess hydrocarbons were diverted into a pressure relief system that included a blowdown stack. In the Iranian case, it was equipped with a flare, but one which the operator didn t ignite in Texas City the blowdown stack was not equipped with a flare to burn off hydrocarbons as they were released. As a result, the flammable overflow from the tower entered the atmosphere. Ignition of the escaped hydrocarbons was enabled by startup of a nearby vehicle resulted in the explosion and subsequent fires (Hopkins, 2008). This example shows the repetitive patterns of accidents, and root causes of events all over the world in this sector. The lesson of this paper is that accidents in one country, where the scenarios are very similar, can and should serve as lessons to prevent the same scenario being actualized in other countries. 

As you evaluate the above criteria, recall that there were scores of towers in Texas City operating for many decades. These towers reheved to the atmosphere (some of which I designed), and nothing ever happened. Nothing ever happened until that terrible incident in 2004. 

Honestly, this explanation is my best guess. But what I m not guessing at is that this incident is not unusual. It s safer to drain saturated water levels well below manways before they are opened. I have accidentally drained 180°F heavy naphtha on my gloved hand without injury. A similar careless incident with 180°F water resulted in a trip to the Texas City infirmary. Excluding fire, hot water is more hazardous to personnel than hydrocarbon liquids of the same temperature. Treat hot water with care and respect. 

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