Report on petro fire - Houston Texas - March 17 2019

https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/https://interactive.khou.com/pdfs/FinalReport.pdf

this was the fire that took out a dozen huge oil tanks

203 page report from county fire marshall - attempted to find cause of
fire - seems that a pump went bad in one of the petro tanks - which
caused a leak and fire

lots of good info here

overview - no one realized there was any problem till one guy started
yelling on the radio - all Emergency Response Team members responded
to firehouse to get their turnout gear and the pumper - they went to
scene and started to fight the fire - there was low water pressure in
one fixed monitor / foam cannon initially as a 2nd tank started to
catch on fire

addresses - 1943 Independence Pkwy, La Porte - 2ndary address 2621
Tidal Road, Deer Park - (also 1030 Ethyl Road mentioned on pg 93 of
203) - [I have no idea why 3 addresses are involved]

firehouse is next to the control room and next to the safety bld - the
firehouse door is opened manually

pg 99 / 203 - former head of security helped new security guard do the
CIMA callout and alarm activations

CIMA = "channel industries mutual aid" = 100 plants in the area that
have industrial fire brigades - mostly along the Houston Ship Channel

plant alarm is an air horn'

normal procedure is that on duty supervisor calls to security and
tells then to activate the plant alarm and have all ERT report to duty
- [I suspect this alert goes out via all radio channels also - I
suspect that radio is the primary alerting method with the air horn as
secondary method]

[apparently it is SOP for all plant employees (who are not ERT
members) to shut down all active processes and to take shelter in a
safe location when they hear the ERT being activated and air horn
wailing ]

49/203 - screamed on radio for more pressure in monitor

50/203 - managers and supervisors have 'company issued' 'intrinsically
safe' cellphones - they are bricks - [maybe no other workers are
supposed to have cellphones when onduty at the plant]

48/203 - they try to handle incidents inhouse - 'Operations' does not
call CIMA - Maintenance probably does not call CIMA either - unknown
when CIMA was called - [ ie the only person who can call for outside
assistance might be the top guy onduty at the plant ] - [ apparently
all workers are divided into 2 major groups - Ops vs Mtnce ]

[ note - I dont think that ITC "produces" anything - they just "store"
stuff - as opposed to many of the other plants in the area - this
might explain why they just have 1 fire truck apparently - ie they
dont run fractionators / ethylators / whatever - all the various
chemical engineering machines - and maybe they dont have any toxic
chemicals - maybe just good ole petro stuff]

[ iirc there was no ladder truck onscene for 4 hours - per my memory
of watching events live via the Internet - via a live helicopter video
feed from a news station helicopter ]

Bottom Line - I bet they called for mutual aid too slowly - like
Paradise CA - like Gatlinburg TN