Hello Ian. I remember reading the report about how the disaster was started and am very certain there was one ne'er do well involved. You might want to do a search of magazines such as Time or Newsweek. I believe this occured in 1980.
Might the plant have been dangerous? Yes. Did safety or environmental requirements in India, at least in the late 1970s, foster the potential of such a disaster? Probably.
Do companies build plants like this in 3rd world countries because of lax rules? Yes.
Do 3rd world countries still encourage this? Yes.
Just look at China's record regarding coal mine accidents. They have thousands of deaths annually. The really bad ones we will never hear about. There are rumors of leveled cities.
In the former Soviet Union there was such a horrible blast of nuclear waste material, in the 50s I believe, that thousands of square miles are still quaranteened. I'm trying to remember the name of the place but it is not even on maps any longer. History was erased!
Could this happen in the US today? Absolutely. If that trainload of chlorine derailed in the middle of a major metro area thousands could have died. It almost happened in Baltimore a few years ago as a trainload of chemicals blew up in the tunnel under the city. That was a really close call.
There is no question in my mind one valve can level a plant. There was a foundary in western VA that was leveled because of a gas leak about 4 or 5 years ago. Lots of workers never found. Plant is gone now, but the locals did not want it to leave as they needed the jobs.
A Kaiser Aluminum plant in Alabama was leveled in 1999 (I saw that mess and had a small part in the rebuild)) because of a leaky valve. Not only was the building leveled, the plant was leveled! I mean nothing was left but debris.
Part of the Radford Arsenal in Radford VA blew up back in the 90s. Never found the workers as these types of plants have thick walls and blow away rooves so the blast goes up. Believe it or not, smoking materials were found on the site in spite of the 'no smoking' rule in arsenals.
A tank trucker was delivering a load of deadly chemicals to the paper mill 3 miles south of Kings Dominion in the 90s. He opened the valve on the tanker before he had secured the pipe connected to the on site storage tank. He died so fast he could not turn off the valve. fortunately the wind was blowing away from the plant and Kings Dominion was closed for the season. Whatever the bleaching agent was, the stuff was so bad that a hazmat team had to come in with special gear to close the valve. Only the trucker died fortunately.
Even when US multinationals build offshore and try to do the right thing the locals just do not support safety. You may remember a couple of horrible accidents in Nigeria involving gasoline pipelines. Locals would poke holes in the pipe with picks, bricks or whatever and scoop up the gasoline as it poured out. On more than one occasion as the groups gathered to steal gas something would light it off. This has resulted in mass incinerations of vandals.
How do you protect the populace from themselves?
I can go on and on as smoke stack industry was my life for almost 30 years. Accidents happen often, and I'd say with some certainty that 90% of the accidents were the result of human errors.
Rich
Interesting photo
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RACastanet
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- Location: Richmond, VA
What you do is you engineer the system so that even a dummy can do it. For example, I don't know how to build a plant, but I've seen anesthesia given. Some elements are out of our control (all necks are different) but after identifying problems, in industry instituted multiple checks to determine tube placement, made all the dials standardized because people were getting confused one machine to another, made it impossible to turn the oxygen down too far during a case, etc etc. And it worked. These are individuals this was done for, not a village with 20 thousand potential victims. If Dow and UC want to make a case they did enough to prevent disasters they can present that view--in court. Believe me, we wouldn't be content with an indian company who'd killed 16 WTC's worth of people to declare their innocence from the Indian subcontinent. We'd want em tried.
I know the safety ***** in the third world but as I've stated many a time on this forum, we have to pick our standards of comparison carefully.
I know the safety ***** in the third world but as I've stated many a time on this forum, we have to pick our standards of comparison carefully.
--Ian
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RACastanet
- Posts: 3744
- Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
- Location: Richmond, VA
"What you do is you engineer the system so that even a dummy can do it."
No, absolutley not correct. You might engineer it so a dummy cannot screw it up, but a determined screw up will find a way intentionally or otherwise.
These industrial complexes are just that... complex to operate. It takes years to learn how to run just portions of a facility, and decades to be a plant engineer or manger. There may be a youngster in an executive marketing or finance position, but the gray hairs run the physical plant.
As for standardization, each plant is built for its purpose. I have seen or been involved with some 40+ paper machines and never saw two even remotely alike. The longest one I worked on was in Covington VA and was about 1,500 feet long! The 'paper maker' was actually an older gent, and making good paper (this one makes the shiny stuff for high end magazines) requires an artists touch.
Machines that make toilet paper look and work very different, as does one making cardboard or paper for bags.
In the chemical industry, the same is true. There are huge command centers with mainframe computers and lots of engineers keeping watch so things stay in control.
Yes, you can standardize things to protect the dummies. Red pipes carry hot water or pressurized steam. The green wire is always the earth ground. A valve is always closed by turning it clockwise as you look down on the stem. However, nothing prevents someone for opening a valve that should be closed, or not checking to see if it ally did close or open.
A few years ago just south of the city of Richmond at a fuel tank farm, a careless employee opened a valve to fill a tank with heating oil. This was a huge tank holding 10s of thousands of gallons of fuel. He then walked away as it would take hours to fill. However, he opened the wrong valve and was pumping fuel into an already full tank. By the time someone saw what was going on thousands of gallons of fuel had poured out of the overflow pipes onto the ground.
Knowing there was a slight possibility this could happen. AMOCO, who owned the farm, had built a huge dike all around each tank and it contained the spill. However, had there been a spark, much of south side Richmond would have been incinerated. AMOCO would have been blamed for a conflagration caused by a careless and lazy worker, and Richmond would have been a mess. Yet, this is a modern facility.
If we could people proof everything there would be fewer accidents. We just cannot do so.
Rich
No, absolutley not correct. You might engineer it so a dummy cannot screw it up, but a determined screw up will find a way intentionally or otherwise.
These industrial complexes are just that... complex to operate. It takes years to learn how to run just portions of a facility, and decades to be a plant engineer or manger. There may be a youngster in an executive marketing or finance position, but the gray hairs run the physical plant.
As for standardization, each plant is built for its purpose. I have seen or been involved with some 40+ paper machines and never saw two even remotely alike. The longest one I worked on was in Covington VA and was about 1,500 feet long! The 'paper maker' was actually an older gent, and making good paper (this one makes the shiny stuff for high end magazines) requires an artists touch.
Machines that make toilet paper look and work very different, as does one making cardboard or paper for bags.
In the chemical industry, the same is true. There are huge command centers with mainframe computers and lots of engineers keeping watch so things stay in control.
Yes, you can standardize things to protect the dummies. Red pipes carry hot water or pressurized steam. The green wire is always the earth ground. A valve is always closed by turning it clockwise as you look down on the stem. However, nothing prevents someone for opening a valve that should be closed, or not checking to see if it ally did close or open.
A few years ago just south of the city of Richmond at a fuel tank farm, a careless employee opened a valve to fill a tank with heating oil. This was a huge tank holding 10s of thousands of gallons of fuel. He then walked away as it would take hours to fill. However, he opened the wrong valve and was pumping fuel into an already full tank. By the time someone saw what was going on thousands of gallons of fuel had poured out of the overflow pipes onto the ground.
Knowing there was a slight possibility this could happen. AMOCO, who owned the farm, had built a huge dike all around each tank and it contained the spill. However, had there been a spark, much of south side Richmond would have been incinerated. AMOCO would have been blamed for a conflagration caused by a careless and lazy worker, and Richmond would have been a mess. Yet, this is a modern facility.
If we could people proof everything there would be fewer accidents. We just cannot do so.
Rich
Member of the world's premier gun club, the USMC!
