Professional Documents
Culture Documents
01
Background4
02
Objective5
03
Scope5
04
General principles 6
05
Specific requirements 14
06
References16
07
Appendices
Appendix A 17
Appendix B 18
Contents
4
1
Background
The potential for major fires in any installation that handles large
quantities of hydrocarbon products is self-evident. There have been
numerous large damaging fires over the years and these include tank
fires which involve massive product losses and process unit fires which
cause major plant damage and process interruption.
2
Objective
The objective of this position paper is to define the standards that
would be expected of a very good level of fire pre-plans in the oil, gas,
and petrochemical industry. These standards are also reflected in the
Marsh energy risk ranking criteria. They can be used to support and
define risk improvement recommendations and also to provide detailed
advice to clients seeking to improve their fire protection and emergency
response systems.
3 Scope
The scope of this position paper includes the description and purpose,
the ownership and development, and the format and content of fire
pre-plans. It is applicable to any facility handling hydrocarbons and toxic
materials.
Risk engineering position paper
4
General
principles
Plants are normally designed, built, and operated to avoid fires by controlling
the basic causes; loss of containment and ignition. They are also provided with
detection and alarm systems to promote early response and intervention.
Finally, there are passive and active fire protection facilities, and emergency
response systems and resources, to be used as a final barrier to prevent or
minimise the consequences.
Fire pre-plans should be used to assess the resources required. They should
be used for regular training and drills, and reviewed and updated after each
event. Fire protection systems and emergency response resources (equipment
and personnel) are generally designed to cope with the greatest demand they
are likely to face. At a given site, the controlling scenario is generally referred
to as the fire case. Whilst a lot of attention is paid to this as it underpins the
basic design requirements of the central fire protection systems, there are
other cases that need also to be studied to ensure the site is prepared for a
range of eventualities.
6
5
Specific
requirements
5.1 Policy and procedure
The Health, Safety and Environment Management System (HSE-MS) should include the
procedure for the development and application of fire pre-plans. A copy of the fire pre-plans
should be included in the emergency procedures manual for the site. Fire pre-plans should be
managed in the same way as all other controlled documents.
Specific evacuation plans, muster points, headcount, etc. should be covered under a separate
procedure in the site emergency response plans.
By definition, a fire pre-plan is a “desk-top” derived plan, with additional input from exercise
and incident feedback. The pre-plan is best developed by a team effort. Team members should
include:
• Person responsible for site tactical emergency response team e.g. fire chief/fire engineer.
• Person responsible for first-line response e.g. shift supervisor.
• Operations representative - area specific.
• Firefighting team representative.
• Risk engineer.
• Safety officer.
Risk engineering position paper
The pre-plan should be seen as an evaluation of the type of response required for typical
scenarios. In the event of an actual incident, the pre-plan should be seen as a guide and would
need to be adjusted to suit local factors, e.g. weather conditions, actual process conditions. The
fire preplan acts as an aide-memoire in crisis situations where rational thinking time could be
limited. The development of a fire pre-plan may also highlight where there may be deficiencies in
response capability or particular problems with the subject scenario.
• A fire pre-plan for each major storage tank and each bund area (although these can often be
combined for identical tanks in a single local area).
• A fire pre-plan for each pressurised storage vessel and containment area, including protection
of the run-off and impounding area, and key steps to avoid a boiling liquid expanding vapor
explosion (BLEVE).
• A fire pre-plan for refrigerated storage tanks including protection of the run-off and
impounding area.
• A fire pre-plan for each berth at the marine terminal.
• A fire pre-plan for each rail and truck loading gantry.
• A fire pre-plan for each defined “fire area” of the unit e.g. as limited by layout/drainage where
this is practical/ meaningful. At least the two or three most severe fire cases for each process
unit should be defined.
• Any other specific cases that are equivalent to one of the above.
8
Section Description
Incident
Unit/section/equipment item/scenario.
description
Section Description
• For major fire cases only – i.e. those that are likely to test the capacity
of the systems or define stocks to be accessible; and those that are
Maximum foam likely to require special equipment, specific system configurations or
and water supply arrangements to be set up early in the response plan.
requirements • Assess the maximum quantities of foam and firewater required
to control and extinguish the fire. This should be based on likely
duration and intensity, and the attack strategy.
6
Reference to
industry losses
Description
Gasoline layer built up on top of 270 ft diameter
floating roof tank due to heavy rain. Fire started by
08/06/2001 lightning, producing full surface tank fire. Emergency
services set up fire fighting equipment, and once in
Country United States
place, the fire was extinguished in 65 minutes.
Location Louisiana
Unit Type Storage
Event Tank fire Position paper comment
This incident is the largest tank fire ever
extinguished. It illustrates the benefits of fire pre-
plans.
Description
An ethylene release from a major pipeline ignited
to form a jet fire, which impinged on an adjacent
Acrylonitrile storage tank. A major tank fire ensued
which took 9 hours to extinguish, during which a
number of fire tenders were in attendance with the
deployment of 1,180 fire fighters. The flames had
a devastating impact on the tank’s concrete wall,
causing cracks and causing the stability of the whole
17/03/2008 tank to be in question. Note that the original jet
fire took 5 hours to extinguish. There was no active
Country Germany fire protection available in the area, and no specific
Location Koln emergency plans for this scenario. The total cost
Unit Type Storage (property damage, plus business interruption) was
Event Tank fire around Euro 53 million.
7
Reference
to industry
standards
API RP 2001 Fire Protection in Refineries.
12
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14