LECTURE 3

EMERGENCIES OF MAN -MADE CHARACTER

Man-made emergencies usually mean accidents and disasters associated with

industrial and economic activities of human origin. These events are divided into
several types, mainly local, regional, state, interstate and global.

A man-made (technogenic) catastrophe - is a catastrophe that leads to

loss of human life, damage to human health, destruction or demolition of facilities,
as well as environmental pollution. A technogenic accident is a hazardous event
that occurs in transport, construction, industrial facilities and technical systems that
threatens human life and health, disrupts technological processes, causes
destruction, and damages the environment.

Technogenic ES are formed as the result of:

- accidents;
- fires;
- explosions.
Accidents - damage to facilities, equipment, buildings and structures, followed by
failures in industrial processes that can threaten human life.

Fires - more often caused by accidents in big factories, oil fields and settlements.
The main reason for fires in accidents and disasters is the spillage of flammable or
explosive substances. Explosions in greenhouses, short circuits in power lines can
be caused by the interaction of some chemical substances. The main reason of
fires depends on the work activities of the company and the materials of which
the building is built.

Explosions - explosions in large enterprises are characterised by deformation and

destruction of constructions, formation of fires, release of energy systems and
toxic substances into the environment. The most serious accidents happen as a
result of coal dust and natural gas explosions in underground mines. These
explosions usually end with fires, landslides and fatalities.

In recent years, with increasing technical developments in industry and

production, a great attention has been paid to safety. Contemporary,
sophisticated production processes are developed with an ever-increasing degree
of reliability. However, it is obvious that there is no an accident-free situation.
Causes of man-made accidents:

Improperly designed and insecure buildings

Poor construction or design deviations

Incorrect location of production;

Careless handling of work by management;

Depreciation and amortization of fixed assets;

Weakening of production and technological discipline;

Inadequacy of existing technology;

Lack of necessary legal framework in some enterprises;

Lack of appropriate legal framework in some enterprises; Inadequate

emergency notification system, etc.

Technogenic accidents caused by natural disasters (storms, earthquakes,

tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.)

One of these causes is enough to lead to a life-threatening accident. Such

accidents are not only dangerous to life, but also cause serious material damage
to the economy and long-term moral and psychological damage to the victims.
For this reason, to prevent these dangerous accidents, which are up to us,
everyone must observe maximum safety measures in their work and activities.

The scale of a man-made accident includes not only the size of the area where the
accident occurred, but also its indirect consequences - communication failures,
disruption of the water supply system, the need to repair damaged buildings, and
the severity of the damage consequences. The consequences of local
emergencies occur at specific facilities. At such enterprises liquidation of
consequences of emergencies is carried out at the expense of own capacities and
resources of the enterprise.

Man-made ES can happen in the following cases:

 - accidents leading to extended power outages at power plants;
- accidents at power interchanges, resulting in long interruptions of
power supply to consumers and territories;
- Failure of transport electric contact points;
- Accidents in life support systems;
- in the sewerage system;
- heating mains;
- water supply systems;
- in municipal gas pipelines;
- More than 10 tonnes of a single discharge of wastewater at the
treatment facilities of industrial enterprises;
- Mass discharges of pollutants at industrial gas treatment plants.
These are accidents, fires, explosions, etc. caused by human activities. The
saturation of production and service spaces with ultra-modern equipment and
technology dramatically increases the number of accidents and tragedies listed
above.

Two-thirds of the world's man-made emergencies are road traffic accidents. The
remaining one-third are industrial, construction and other man-made
catastrophes. In modern times, any form of transport is considered as a potential
threat to human life and health. By taking full advantage of developments in
technology, modern transport has achieved extremely high levels of comfort and
speed, and have been applied a range of safety measures. However, at the same
time, there is still a maximum risk.

Among the existing modes of air, rail, water, road and space transport, road
transport accidents are the highest in terms of the number of accidents. The most
dangerous traffic accidents for the environment and human life are man-made
accidents, which are also observed to release harmful chemical and radioactive
substances into the environment.

In general, according to statistical research between 1994-1998 in the world the

daily big passenger and good trains accidents number was 8-15. The main source
of social and environmental
hazard in railway accidents was
related with transportation of
sensitive loads (hazardous,
explosive, chemical, etc.). In 1979, as
result of railway accident in the Canadian town of Massisoga released a huge
amount of chlorine into the environment, which lead to an ecological emergency
over an area of 125 km2, causing 240 000 people has been forced to leave the
danger zone for the state. It is estimated that the total environmental damage
from the accident was £1 million .

Figure 1. Fire at an oil platform in Baku

Azerbaijan is not insured against such accidents. Since, the incident that
occurred on December 3, 2015 as a result of a subsea gas pipeline failure on the
bottom of № 10 in the Guneshli field led to the death of 30 workers and property
damage.

Man-made accidents are also common in the construction sector. In this

case the main trouble is fires. The observations show that the strength and internal
layout of a building in an area of fire, the spread of fire, the release of toxic
substances into the environment, etc. significantly affects the size of the lesion.
Thus, keeping building spacing norms can help to improve fire fighting efficiency
and reduce the potential economic and socio-environmental damage. Experience
shows that the probability of fire spreading is inversely proportional to the distance
between buildings.

Fires and explosions are the result of occupational and industrial accidents.
The largest industrial accident in the world was the explosion at the Union Carbide
methylconionate chemical plant in India, which was caused by the release of high-
pressure steam into the air. The tragedy caused 3,000 deaths on the day of the
accident and 15,000 deaths in the following years due to air poisoning. The total
number of victims was around 600,000.

Fires most often cause accidents in industrial plants, oil fields, cities and
other populated areas. The intensity of a fire is characterised by the strength of the
thermal impulse, i.e. the amount of thermal energy during certain time.. Fires in
oil and gas fields are the worst. Accidents in offshore oil fields are becoming
increasingly serious and international in nature because of the direct discharge of
oil into the sea and the pollution of the coast by oil, as marine fisheries are severely
affected in such cases. Serious measures need to be taken to prevent the spread of
oil reaching the sea. The greatest material damage is caused by fires in industrial
and storage buildings. In residential buildings there are frequent fatalities which
are a risk factor for fires. Fires in high-rise industrial buildings are relatively rare,
but they increase in severity and spread vertically rapidly. The material damage
caused by them is several times greater than in fires in single-storey buildings. This
leads to high material and human losses. Human casualties occur mostly in the
early stages of fire development, often without suffocation. Fire is a special group
of manifestations that cause great psychological stress and even stress.

Hydrodynamic accident is an accident caused by failure (collapse) of a

hydrodynamic device or its part and flooding of a large area with a large amount
of uncontrolled water mass. Major potentially hazardous hydraulic structures
include dams, submersibles and sluices. The collapse of hydraulic structures
occurs as a result of natural forces (earthquakes, strong winds, scouring of dams)
and human activities (blasting of hydraulic structures, dams with nuclear or
conventional weapons), as well as construction and design errors.

Complications of hydraulic accidents include:

Damage or collapse of water units and their inability to perform their functions
for short or long periods;

The collapse of hydraulic structures at a height of 2-12 m causing the spread of

water waves travelling at 3-25 km/h (up to 100 km/h in mountainous areas)
causing damage to people. and destruction;
catastrophic flooding with inundation of a large area at a height of 0.5-10 m or
more.

These events not only cause great danger to the economy, but also endanger
people's lives. The sudden collapse of residential, industrial, public buildings and
structures, transport communications, the complete or partial collapse of a building
- errors in the design of the building, deviations from the design during
construction, violations of installation rules, incomplete commissioning of the
building, the operation of the building - is an emergency situation resulting from
violations as well as from natural and manmade disasters.

Figure 2. Technogenic accident

Figure 3. Accident in hydro technical installations