A small fire spread to a 10,000-gallon storage tank holding flammable product Tuesday morning at a chemical plant in Upper Merion, Pennsylvania.
Pre-plans for fire emergencies must be continually edited and updated.
Firefighters battled a persistent fire in a chemical storage tank.
At one point, flames covered a 1,000-square-meter area, city's mayor says.
A mechanical problem in the pump circulation system of an 80,000-barrel naphtha storage tank is suspected as the cause of the massive Intercontinental Terminals Company fire on the Houston Ship Channel in March, an update issued by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board states.
There are hundreds of thousands of API storage tanks in use across the United States. Relatively few of them catch fire or have anything catastrophic happen to them. But it’s always best to be prepared.
An internal floating roof's purpose is to create a seal between the tank and the atmosphere. Sealing a tank leaves no gap through which to distribute foam. Foam can be pumped in through a manhole.
An oil tank could be working just fine. However, if it’s struck by lightning, a catastrophe could be imminent, particularly if the tank has not been grounded.
With tanks, original blueprints and drawings should be kept as reference points. These documents can be used to compare notes and measurements such as steel thickness.
Regulations for storing chemical or oils are a lot stricter than for water storage — for obvious reasons. After all, water is not going to catch fire and explode, potentially releasing toxins into the environment.