Safety board report offers insight into emergency response planning

Washington — Swiftly isolating chemical releases and keeping workers safe “should not be mutually exclusive,” the Chemical Safety Board says.

The board made the statement in a recently released final report on a fatal April 2019 explosion and fire at the KMCO production facility in Crosby, TX.

CSB investigators found that an isobutylene leak from fractured piping – which led to one worker’s death and injuries to at least 30 others – could be traced to improper training and materials selection. Further, workers didn’t have proper safety equipment to stop the release from a safe location, but were expected to act immediately to stop releases before KMCO’s emergency response team gathered.

“While those urgent communications and quick actions did help move many operators away from the danger,” CSB said in a press release, “the workers performing the quick actions were at risk.”

CSB continued in the report that “emergency response plans, including procedures and training, need to effectively distinguish between incidents that plant workers can respond to and emergency events that must be handled by a qualified emergency response team.”

Other lessons:

• Cast iron is widely recognized as a brittle material that should not be used in hazardous applications, including applications that involve flammable or toxic chemicals.
• Piping systems should be equipped with protection from high-pressure conditions, where liquid thermal expansion or other scenarios can create a hazard.
• Reliable facility alarm systems can help ensure effective emergency communication to alert people of danger and inform them of what actions are needed to protect life and health.

“The tragic death and injuries caused by this terrible event should never have happened,” CSB Chair Steve Owens said in the release. “KMCO did not properly train its employees and did not give them adequate protective safety equipment. KMCO also failed to heed industry guidance about the need to install remote isolation equipment so that its employees could have safely stopped this serious hazardous leak.”