CSB Safety Video: Fire From Ice

On February 16, 2007, a propane fire erupted at the Valero McKee Refinery in Sunray, Texas, north of Amarillo. Three workers suffered serious burns, and the refinery was forced to shut down. The fire began following a leak in the propane deasphalting unit and spread quickly, in part because of the rapid collapse of a major pipe rack carrying flammable hydrocarbons. Some of the rack's support columns had not been fireproofed.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Valero
• McKee
• Sunray
• Refinery
• Texas
• Chemical
• Safety
• Board
• CSB
• Fire
• From
• Ice

[akshona]

Another reason to use Ball Valves instead of Gate Valves. You will know if their not completely closed because of the handle position.

[mervinsx]

avrilchic - i wouldn't like to blame - but this could have easily been prevented. in the early 1990s, when the process was changed and the bypass line isolated, the redundant pipework should have been removed or physically isolated with open-ends, to avoid pressure build-up. this is standard practice, thanks but sadly due to incidents such as this.

[Serostern]

@pozorlano Sure, you can get an engineers degree, and tour the world identifying hazards and fixing them for free.

Its damn easy to say "Those redundant pipes should not have been there" in retrospect, but at the time it wasnt as obvious.

[eisenklad]

for every safety guideline written in any industry, someone has been injured/harmed or killed.

we are stuck being reactive. we can never achieve complete safety-proactive state unless you forget about the money

[Chem87Engineer]

In a propane deasphalting unit, what would be the best materials to be used for strippers where the asphalt or the deasphalted oil is produced, and why ? anyone knows ? thanks.

[pozorlano]

@avrilchic ... Mentally laziness and ignorance! I am often surprised of you guys over there.. : You can put a man on the moon and safe back. That "leftover" pipes are freezing when the temperature is low enough no ones seems to be aware of unless someone writes a book and shown next to an another fat typo as Oprah or are payed telling you.

You are all a part of a sick culture which have one thing in focus above all: MONEY !!

[canivalpo]

I was the contractor who was burned in this fire. There were ways of preventing this fire/explosion and the fire did not happen the way the video turned out. However it is second hand knowledge and there are only three people who "saw" it and only myself to tell the truth. Apathy was well at work here along with the most influential of all things in the world, Money.

[akshona]

This even happened to our water pipes. When they froze it broke off a piece of an internal check valve. When the weather got warmer and the pipes thawed, the piece of the check valve traveled almost 50 feet and got stuck in an elbow.

[avrilchic]

kaayodave::

this wasnt laziness! the pipes underneath the ground had frozen and there wasnt anything that we could do about it. my father who works at valero was there. there wasnt away to prevent this.