West Fertilizer Plant Fire Essay

The Texas City disaster took place on April 16th, 1947, with the detonation of 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate, near the Texas City docks. The Grandcamp was set to embark on an assigned trip to Europe to help in the reconstruction of various countries in the aftermath of the Second World War. The ships were loaded with 32.5 % ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which is a high explosive used in military and mining operations. The result of which was a DDT which is a deflagration to detonation causing a massive explosion leading to many deaths, destroyed homes, and the surroundings being ruined. The leading causes of this horrific tragedy were poor transportation and storing laws of ammonium nitrate which was a main component in the disaster, if these two components had have been handled with more care the lives of innocent people would not have been lost.

On January 15, 1919, one of the most tragic and strange disasters occurred in Boston, Massachusetts. It was around forty degrees that day, when two days previously it had been only two degrees. At 12:30 PM 2,300,000 gallons of molasses spilled into the streets near Keany Square after the tank holding it exploded, most think due to a combination of poor design and the drastic temperature flux. The aftermath was tragic, with twenty one deaths and one hundred and fifty injured. The company who owned the tank was quick to blame others, but soon it was found that the tank was poorly constructed, and if more time had been taken, the Boston Molasses Disaster would never have happened.

The Centralia Number 5 explosion was definitely an incident that occurred but could have been prevented with the guidance and persistence of public officials such as Scanlan. As a public administrator, and employer, or a supervisor it is your due diligence to first comply with policies and procedures set

Introduction. On 06 January 2005, a cargo train carrying a massive amount of chlorine spilled in Graniteville, South Carolina creating panic and indeed chaos to both citizens and emergency managers on how to properly respond to the hazardous materials released from the train wreckage. The people of the small rural town of Graniteville located just outside of Aiken, South Carolina, where caught in their sleep when Freight train 192 traveling approximately 47 mph struck other consignments spilling a dangerous amount of chlorine gas into the atmosphere. As a result of this disaster, 5,400 individuals were evacuated from their homes whiling causing nine death. The magnitude of such disaster was one that would change any town or city forever.

-A giant explosion in Oklahoma City in 1995, killed 168 lives, was a retribution for a

There is yet to be a full proof way to store this toxic material (examiner.com).

Timothy McVeigh packed a Ryder truck full of five thousand pounds of explosives. These explosives were made out of fertilizer. He parked the truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. He lit a five minute fuse when he parked the truck, and he left. He was about six blocks from the building when the explosion happened. The explosion destroyed a nine story concrete and granite building. It also destroyed or damaged nearly 300 nearby buildings, and completely destroyed the vehicles across the street. People in the building survived by diving underneath their desks. This explosion could be felt up to fifty five miles away.

On July 10, 2001 four U.S Forest Service Firefighters died while battling the thirty mile fire. Six others injured including two hikers. The thirty mile fire was the second deadliest fire in Washington state history.

Connell, II, Disaster Management Solutions Inc., MA [M] Melody Eady, Georgia Fire Academy, GA [SE] Richard J. S. Karasaki, Jr., Honolulu Fire Department, HI [U] Wesley V. Kitchel, Santa Rosa Fire Department, CA [L] Timothy A. Kovacs, Phoenix Fire Department, AZ [L] Timothy J. Lombardi, Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department, OH [L] Rep. NFPA Fire Service Section J. Michael McCreary, American Emergency Response Training, TN [SE] Robert N. Moody, Montgomery County, Maryland, MD [L] Robert E. Rhea, Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department, VA [U] Brian Rousseau, State of New York, NY [E] Robert J. Schappert, III, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, DC [U] Peter M. Schecter, Government of the British Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands [E] Rep. International Association of Fire Chiefs Ralph Sproul, Chevron Products Company, CA [U] Michael L. Walker, Oklahoma City Fire Department, OK [U] Charles A. Wehrli, Spec Rescue, IL [SE] Ernest R. Wright, Wright Rescue Solutions, Inc., FL [SE] Leonard E. Yox, Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute, MD [SE] Andrea Zaferes, Lifeguard Systems, RIPTIDE, AZ Training, NY [SE] Alternates Brad Eveland, U.S. Air Force, AK [E] (Voting Alt. to U.S. Air Force Rep.) Fred J. Jackson, Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department, OH [L] (Alt. to T. J. Lombardi) Rep. NFPA Fire Service Section Frank E. Florence, NFPA Staff Liaison

On April 19,1995 at 9:02 a.m, an explosion took place on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma city. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was a federal complex designed and constructed to hold sixteen federal agencies, various centers and offices; consisting of the United States Secret Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Social Security Administration, General Services Administration, Veterans Administration, and Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Transportation, Defense Audit Agency and Investigative Services, U.S. Marine Corps and Army Recruiting, Customs office, General Accounting Office 's, Credit Union, Raymond’s Place Snack Bar, Conference room, and America 's Kids Day Care Center. Altogether the federal building employed an estimated five hundred and fifty personal. The explosion nearly disintegrated one of the third of the federal building and created havoc around a 16 block radius, an estimated $652 million worth of damages altogether. The explosion took the lives of one hundred and sixty eight individuals, 19 of which were children and mounting non-fatal injuries of over eight hundred individuals. These lives were taken away by the worst domestic terrorist attack on the United States soil and the first to be conducted at the center of the

For years if not decades, firefighters have responded to a reported structure fire that turned out to be a fully involved single room. This fire scenario requires a core set of fire tactics and skills to control and extinguished the fire, but is it this simple? Perhaps twenty years it may have been, but new dangers are lurking in every scenario and may have detrimental outcomes for unsuspecting and unaware firefighters and victims. The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) agency along with the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) have been conducting research to understand fire behavior and fire dynamics. This research is providing firefighters with new information about how and why

Shortly after midnight on the morning of May 4, 2009, a tetrahydrafuran leak in the dirty solvent tanks at the Veolia ES Technical Solutions facility in West Carrollton, Ohio ignited causing an explosion that rocked the local community. The blast severely injured two employees, injured two more, and damaged numerous structures on site and in the community. The location of the personnel with respect to the operating plant is credited to the injuries the workers sustained while insufficient controls in the operating room and a lack of ability to reroute vapors prevented the operators from identifying and mitigating the release. Although the root cause of this event could not be determined, two probable causes surfaced. Either THF reacted to

This Article talks about the methane leak that took place in Porter Ranch Los Angeles, but the were no casualties. There was a leakage from Aliso Canyon natural-gas storage facility, which was one hundred thousand tons of methane, and it is considered to be one of the worst environmental disasters. More than 2,000 families were evacuated from their neighborhood after some people encountered headaches, vomiting, and bloody noses.

Much like all events and natural phenomena that pose a threat to civilization, humans have learned to cope with and prevent the loss of human life and destruction of property in devastating blazes that can break out seemingly at random. Fighting fires was not always the science it is today, but due to the use of new technologies and the fundamental understanding of what fire is, how it spreads, how it can kill, and how it is stopped, our protocol when dealing with fires has increased our success rate and continues to grow with applications of engineering, chemistry, and meteorology.

In the article “Know the Smells and Warning Bells of WMD”, the author, John Linstrom’s principal point is that the fire departments should better prepare to respond to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Historically, explosive or WMD incidents were handled by law enforcement, while fire assumed a support role, but with increased terroristic occurrences, firefighters have been finding themselves in situations where they have been first on scene. Mr. Linstrom stresses that firefighters need to be mindful of the threat of explosives and WMD’s when responding to incidents (Linstrom, 2004). Firefighters need to familiarize themselves with terrorist tactics and beware of potential high-risk