Incident Report

Subject:                        Cooling Water Requirements - Tank Fires

Date of Email reporting Incident:   Mon 01/10/2007

Report Detail:

Thanks to Gene Allen Allianz Global for sharing this with JOIFF. Taking this theme into the flammable liquid process arena I am of a similar opinion that too much misuse and ineffective overuse of cooling water is used whilst no attempt is made to mitigate and reduce the thermal impact of the fire by extinguishment. When water resources are scarce you would be better served using water in the form of foam which serves to extinguish, cool and vapour suppress.
A good adage is if you 'paint the structure white' you will be making an effective difference. This is taken in context of dynamic risk assessment, safe fire-ground operations and sound environmental impact management. For sure your going to reduce risk to life and minimise asset damage if you apply this strategy...

Cooling Water During a Tankfire.pdf

Additional Comments: (Email dated Mon 01/10/2007)

I would caution against using cooling water onto the burning tank as well. There are many images around showing the cooling jets in use and subsequent images show the side folding at these points first.

As the text says the metal is quite thick and if cooling jets are applied on the outside the outer steel contracts whereas the inner does not cool so quickly - this causes the steel to bend and it will collapse. If you look at the images available most of the collapses are where the cooling jets are applied.

If dealing with crude oil a boilover will occur if the tank burns for long enough

The best advice is to plan for the event and make sure you have the necessary resources (Water, foam, equipment, manpower) available

You can also go a long way to avoid the escalation if you ensure that the fixed systems are maintained properly through proper Asset Integrity Assurance programs

There is no substitute for effective planning and training