The Buncefield Incident - 7 Years on: Could It Happen Again?

摘要

Are we nearly halfway to the next major incident after Buncefield? But then, there have been other explosions and fires overseas since Buncefield, including Silver Eagle, Utah (2009), Puerto Rico (2009), Jaipur (2009), Macondo/Deep Horizon (2010), and Venezuela (2012). The explosion and fire at the Buncefield fuel terminal on 11 December 2005 was the result of a sequence of events and activities that had taken place in the days, weeks, months, and years prior to the incident. The primary causes were the failure of two-level instruments on the tank that overflowed; the alarm and overfill protection functions did not operate as a result. Allied to these technical failures was inadequate and poor presentation of information about the status of the plant that prevented diagnosis and recognition that a problem existed.