Current affairs
they will have on productivity or on snap judgements about the severity of the fire in question.
Equipment and materials While the use of the offending pipe was a communication issue, the damage caused by the explosion could have been better contained with the right materials. The fi rewall dividing the pump from the oil and gas supplies was not designed to resist explosions and immediately ruptured under the force of the explosion. This is because the platform was originally
designed for oil only and had not been properly retrofitted to protect against the risk of gas explosion. Had the explosion been contained here, the chain reaction that caused the oil and gas lines to catch fire would never have happened; nor would the control room have been damaged and abandoned. Also, fi refi ghting equipment which could have
stemmed the blaze was not used. Water pumps designed to quell fi res were set on manual, due to the presence of divers as part of underwater maintenance. This was not seen as necessary, however, as divers were trained never to go near the water inlets. The pumps were never enabled, as a result of the control room damage, and could not be started after the fire began.
Handover procedures The rush to complete scheduled maintenance, and complacency over the risk of fire, led
to improper handover procedures, which were at the heart of the communication breakdown. Maintenance to a critical safety component was left unfinished and the requisite efforts to communicate this fact were not made. The notice of this issue was left in the control room without informing anyone and was subsequently misplaced. Furthermore, the organisation of such notices led to permits applying to a single component or area being scattered between different folders, so that if enough care was not taken to track them all down, not all relevant permits could be seen. This evidently did not happen, due in part to the rush to fix the initial issue and to keep the platform running. These are all fairly modern disasters, and
all have set precedents for how we deal with fi res in unique circumstances. Yet their lessons can be applied much more broadly, and in almost all organisations and scenarios. Businesses should take care to consider
the physical and human factors in an emergency scenario, and plan for every eventuality. When an accident does occur, people will then be able to act quickly and decisively, without being impeded by the environment around them
James Beale is operations manager at Invicta Fire Protection. For more information, view page 5
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