The Multi-Agency Response to the Buncefield Oil Storage Depot Incident - Case Study Example

Incident Command Introduction How the industry reacts to occurrences such as Buncefield and how the watchdogs respond on behalf of the public is an appraisal of our society. A crucial and energetic response with all parties co-operating is the result of a self-governing and sophisticated society. If there is a grave incident then everyone, including the community, the corporation directly concerned and any company in the equivalent or similar divisions suffers costs to a greater or lesser degree. In that case, companies have a vested concern in ensuring that these incidents do not take place. Stakeholders have a right to expect acquiescence with a minimum set of principles and prospects from everyone in a particular area and consistency with top set of standards for specific situations involving unusual dangers. This report strives to review the multi-agency response to the Buncefield Oil Storage Depot incident and examines the success of that multi-agency reaction at a planned, calculated and operational level. It also underscores areas of good practice and identifies areas where the multi-agency response did not work efficiently. In this extensive cover, it proposes the several recommendations on how to mitigate such occurrences in future. An efficient incident command system An efficient incident command system has a lot of advantages; an efficient incident command system entails an arrangement that is reliable. According to Great Britain Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service (2006) the need for high reliability of an incident command system calls for recommendations that are linked to hi-tech improvements in hardware. Such improvements are vital in convalescing process safety and environmental security, but achieving their optimum benefit depends on human and organisational factors such as the roles of operators, controllers and directors. Efficient incident command systems facilitate understanding and defining the roles and responsibilities of the control room operators in ensuring that safety remains a high priority in an organisation. Such a system also provides appropriate information and system boundaries for front-line staff to enable them to dependably notice, analyse and respond to potential incidents. It also ensures that the aspects of training, experience and capability assurance of staff for safety-critical and environmental protection activities are consistent. Such a system also elucidates the apt workload, staffing levels and working environment for frontier personnel. An efficient incident command system plays a central role in ensuring strong communications administration inside and between sites and contractors and with operators of supply systems and transmitting sites. A good incident command system is also characterised by a prequalification auditing and operational checking of contractors’ capabilities to deliver, sustain and uphold high-integrity equipment. Such a system also provides effective homogenized procedures for key activities in repairs, testing and operations. Erickson (1999) insists that a competent incident response system is able to clarify arrangements for organization and supervision of control room staff and effectively overseeing changes that impact on people, processes and equipment. When an efficient incident command system is in position, the roles and responsibilities of all the people concerned in supervising, performing, or confirming work in the management of fuel transfer and storage, including suppliers, are clearly defined. According to Buncefield Standards Task Group Final Report (2007) an efficient incident command system also ensures that a competence management system is implemented; this is connected to risk assessment for fuel transfer and storage, and it helps ensure that everyone whose work impacts on the control of major accident hazards is competent to do so. To achieve efficient incident command systems, a clear understanding and delineation of roles and responsibilities and guarantee of competency in those roles are necessary. Level of commands needed in incident response All sites in reach should set up in writing an appropriate on-site emergency plan as required by the COMAH Regulations. Site-specific assistance should be produced according to the requirements of exercising the fire fighting arrangements. During set up of the on-site plan, the operator ought to confer with the Environmental Agency, the local authority emergency planning unit and finally the local emergency services, mainly the local Fire and Rescue Service, on the content of the onsite plan to make sure that the response available off the site is sufficient to take care of the incident. The operator should present all the information pertaining to the site required by COMAH Regulations to the neighbourhood emergency planning unit to enable the off-site plan schedule to merge with the on-site plan. The operator should keep the on-site scheme up to date and ensure that any noteworthy changes are relayed to the local authority and other agencies of concern. Skilled, well-informed and expert personnel must be involved in the exercise of the fire fighting plan and in assessment of the on-site plan. All contributors to the plan should be inspired to inform the site operator positively of any material changes touching on their involvement. Fire-fighting planning and preparation arrangements involve the actions that should be taken before and after an incident has occurred. These activities should be approved by all concerned parties, as well as off-site responders. Planning assists the fire-fighting operations immeasurably by establishing what is needed to put out the fire or manage a controlled burn, and the way to be used to deliver the needed resources and supervise firewater to thwart environmental impact. Situation-based incident-specific emergency response schemes can identify incident control resources needed for accidental discharge, spillages and fire and emergency response. They can also provide direction on control and use of the essential resources and decisively, can be used as a tool to exercise against, thus sealing the loop from preparation to premeditated and exercised response. When a major incident occurs, the operators should get in touch with the Local Authority Fire and Rescue Service consistent with the pre-incident supervision agreement between the operator and the Fire and Rescue Service (Hirschler 1992). The local authority Fire and Rescue Service should then make an appointment with the operator at the predetermined point for the company concerned. Fire and Rescue Service Incident Commander should then officially liaise with the company on-site commander so as to acquire sufficient information concerning the incident, whether or not persons are involved, the resources available and the dangers and risks associated with the particular event. These persons are then supposed to constitute the incident control team along with others who are established by situations. After that first step, instantaneous priorities and the potential for intensification of the incident should be established. Specific emergency response plans available at the location level should then be made accessible to the incident control team so that it can begin the fire fighting operation. Lines of managerial authority and the means of communication should be visibly established within the emergency response plans to aid in effective reporting and incident control during the operation. The incident control team is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that all personnel are safe. This team should have done a dynamic risk evaluation and if there has been time, a written documentation needs to be presented to Fire Response and Services Incident Control right after their entrance. The incident control team should also ensure that the dynamic risk assessment is recorded and continually re-evaluated, communicated and the strategic mode announced, put into practice and recorded. The incident control team should also appoint safety officers and set up their tasks clearly. The incident control team should also launch the incident command location and determine the operational goals and the incident plan, including planned and strategic considerations. A dynamic risk assessment that would have been implemented at the scene While priority should be given to preventing a loss of primary control, sufficient secondary and tertiary control also remains essential for environmental protection in case of failure of primary containment. The failure of secondary and tertiary containment at Buncefield was a significant factor in the failure to avoid a major mishap to the environment. A risk assessment should have been taken to determine the extent of requirement for tertiary repression. In this regard, several things should have been taken into account. For example, the predictable bund failure modes including the quantity of spilled substances, including hydrodynamic results of disastrous tank failure and emergency response actions such as fire-fighting. The latent impact of the fire on bund reliability including joints in floors and walls should also have been looked into. Passive and active firewater supervision measures should also have been considered. Another consideration should have been the worst-case probable delivered water quantities including fire-fighting agents. On the environmental platform, the most basic aspects are all the pertinent categories of environmental receptors common to major accidents. Nearness of the receptor, for example ground waters under the scene, would also be an important factor in dynamic risk assessment. The scene and the nearby landscape and other hydro-geological factors disturbing liquid pollutant flows and receptor susceptibilities would also be important to consider. Geological factors influencing the permeability of the surrounding land and environmental pollution pathways would also have been a plus during the dynamic risk assessment. The assessment should also have probed into recognized pathways and latent pathways to environmental receptors in case secondary control failed. The probable environmental impact consequences, in terms of scope and severity, of the contaminant and the firewater amounts and flows ensuing from foreseeable failure scenarios also ought to have been considered. Tertiary containment should also have been designed to avoid unfavourable impacts on fire-fighting and other emergency accomplishments and to operate strongly under emergency conditions. Lastly, tertiary containment should make smooth the progress of cleaning up and restoring the activities in the scene of the incident. Based on the extent and capacity determined by the site-specific risk assessment, tertiary containment should have been planned to be independent of secondary containment and any connected risks of disastrous failure in a worst-case major incident situation. The tertiary repression should also be capable of fully containing predictable firewater and liquid pollutant amounts resulting from failure of the secondary control and impermeable to foreseeable entrained or liquefied pollutants. Roles and responsibilities of various public agencies Public agencies have significant roles to play in incidents such as the Buncefield storage fire explosion. Agencies such as the United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association and the United Kingdom Onshore Pipeline Operators’ Association can help to a great extent to elucidate the relevant standards relating to the petroleum industry that could have led to the occurrence of the Buncefield incident. It is also gives a stipulation of the organizational and technical parameters that should be followed when dealing with petroleum products; factors that were not fully followed in the Buncefield incident. The United Kingdom Petroleum Industry Association also gives the minimum allowed good practice in buildings and infrastructure that deals with petroleum products. As per this agency, the bund wall and base construction and penetration joints should not leak; surfaces should be free from faults and cleavages that may allow relatively unhindered liquid boundary movement. This agency would have helped in checking whether there were any damages to the constructions that would have rendered the structure weak and hence caused a leakage. Another public agency that ought to have been involved is the Tank Storage Association. This agency would have dealt with the COMAH top and lower-tier sites, storing of petroleum products such as gasoline and the control of volatile organic compound emissions ensuing from the storage of petrol and its circulation from terminals to service stations. It also deals with vertical, cylindrical, non-refrigerated tanks that are raised above the ground with filling rates that are greater than 100 cubic meters per hour. The Tank Storage Association is also responsible for defining the organization and safety systems for petroleum storage tanks. In this regard, it would have assisted in evaluating the safety integrity level requirements for overfill prevention systems. The Tank Storage Association is also an important agency as far as the capacities of storage tanks and their proper safety limits are concerned. The Environmental agency and the Scottish Environmental Agency are responsible for drafting consistent controls and policies that not only protect the environment, but also persons in that environment as well consistent with COMAH regulations. These agencies should also have been able to devise secondary and tertiary containment in case of failure of primary containment; these agencies should have prevented a major accident to the environment that resulted from failure of primary containment and poorly arranged tertiary and secondary containment procedures. Health and Safety Executive is also another organization that should have helped establish acceptable working conditions at Buncefield; it should also have assisted in delineation of potential health risks at the Buncefield incident and the best health standards that should be followed during the emergency response operation. Need for effective liaison with media and other agencies during major incidents Incidents such as Buncefield incident attract a lot of public interest and for this reason adequate communication is a necessity in such major incidences (Herfordshire Resilience 2007). For example, some local authorities adjacent to Hertfordshire reported after the Buncefield incident said that it was not always apparent why certain actions were being taken such as closure of educational institutions and this gave rise to misunderstanding as to whether they should be taking a similar stroke. Liaison with the media should be one of the major moves after occurrence of such an incident since such misunderstandings always cause unexpected problems in the affected society. The media and other agencies assist much in communicating to both local and international stakeholders on the actions being taken after the incident and the reasons behind those actions. In case there is a misunderstanding or something very crucial to communicate, the media plays a pivotal role. Closely related to media houses are mobile communication companies which help in communication between agencies during sourcing of emergency equipment. Communication problems are not unusual in major incidents and Buncefield incident was not an exception. Though mobile phones are important communication tools to agencies and the media, sometimes other communication systems are usually very important since at times mobile telephones are more susceptible to disruptions. Conclusion The Buncefield explosion which was a huge cloud explosion is an example of a major incident that should not happen again in future and if it does, it should not be allowed to impact negatively on the environment and the society with such great magnitude. In this regard, several measures including dynamic risk assessment plans, vigorous involvement of public agencies, the media and other related agencies, and adoption of an efficient incident command system should be implemented to mitigate such occurrences in future. References Buncefield Standards Task Group Final Report 2007, Safety and environmental standards for fuel storage sites, viewed 19 February 2010, < http://www.hse.gov.uk/comah/buncefield/bstgfinalreport.pdf > Erickson, P A 1999, Emergency response planning for corporate and municipal managers, Academic Press. Great Britain Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service 2006, Buncefield: Hertforshire Fire and Rescue Service’s review of the fire response, The Stationery office. Herfordshire Resilience 2007, Buncefield Multi-agency Debrief Report and Recommendations, Viewed 19 February 2010, Hirschler, M M 1992, Fire Hazard and fire risk assessment, ASTM International. Read More