The First Facility Management Blog

This is relatively old news, but it’s sad all the same. A Texas refinery blast earlier this year (March) was actually caused by employee failure.

According to the Dow Jones Newswire,

the accident was caused by mistakes that took place before and during the startup of the refinery’s isomerization unit, which produces octane boosters for gasoline.

The mistakes began with the overheating and overfilling of a section of the isomerization unit, [Ross] Pillari [president of BP Products North America] said.

“If ISOM unit management had properly supervised the startup, or if ISOM unit operators had followed procedures or taken corrective action earlier, the explosion would not have occurred,” he said.

When the night shift turned over the startup to the day shift at 6 a.m., there wasn’t an adequate exchange of information, and the exchange was not supervised, Pillari said. The supervisor of the unit didn’t arrive until about 7:15 a.m. and left at 10:30 a.m.

“The day shift supervisor was absent during several critical times,” Pillari said.

Under pressure in the column, the hydrocarbon liquid and vapor rushed into an attached blow-down drum, overfilling it. Had the spill been routed to a flare, the severity of the accident might have been reduced.

The accident killed 15 and injured 170, according to this report.

Europeans are gradually gearing up for national ID cards. In Belgium, cards are being intentionally created with typos to thwart counterfeiters. In the UK, government officials are ready to give ID cards the go ahead. Unfortunately, none of these technologies are totally without flaws.

German organizers of the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament are going to require biometric facial scans of fans who attend. This is a high tech effort to prevent a very low tech problem–overly rowdy (and sometimes even life threatening) fans. Jan Libbenga of The Register writes,

The German government plans to record the biometric facial features of those present in stadiums during the World Cup in 2006. By comparing these features with images stored in a database, the police hope to identify potential hooligans. When the software recognises a suspicious person, security forces on location can immediately be alerted.

It’s 1984 all over again.

When a huge chunk of the Northeastern portion of the U.S. was plunged in darkness back in August 2003, it was a little bit scary, a little bit funny, and more than a little bit inconvenient.

Now the same sort of thing has happened in Moscow, right in the middle of an unseasonal heatwave. Russian President Putin is placing the blame on executives at the country’s power monopoly RAO UES, although comparisons to the U.S/Canadian blackout of ‘03 are being played down.

RAO UES CEO Anatoly Chubais described the crisis as worst ever.“Today’s situation is an unprecedented, extremely grave cascade-type failure,” Chubais said.“It is clear already now that the accident began with a fire at the Chagino substation – a facility of key importance to south-bound supply lines,” he said.

Chubais said the power blackout could not be compared with the energy crisis in the United States and Canada in 2003.

“The scale of our incident is immeasurably smaller,” Chubais said.

In his words, 100 power stations were stopped in the U.S. and Canada, “while here it is only 12-13.”

The total number of people who were left without electricity in the U.S. and Canada exceeded 100 million. Here, according to preliminary information, it is 1.5-2 million,” he added.

Chubais said the energy system in the U.S. and Canada had been restored in 26 hours. “We are ready to resume the main electricity supplies within three to four hours, he said.

Criminal proceedings are already in the works; those Russians don’t waste any time.