You are back at your plant the Monday after the Dangerous When Wet leaking
tanker incident happened, and you are telling your fellow HazMat Team
Coordinator how you handled the situation. Before he has a chance to offer his
opinion, a call comes in over your radio that a forklift has punctured a 55 gallon
drum at the door between the oxidizer storage area and the production
department. There is a spill, and no one is injured; however, the production
employee does not know what was spilled. You make an immediate page to all
emergency response team members in the area, and then you head out the door
to the scene with your fellow HazMat Team Coordinator (the production
department chief engineer). While en route to the scene, you call the plant
manager and apprise her of what you know and that you will report back as soon
as you have more information.
The incident command center can either be the production office or the
conference room near the plant manager’s office. In this case, your first choice is
the production office.
The storage area building has multiple storage bays for oxidizers, flammables,
acids, and bases. When you arrive near the scene, you find the punctured drum
on its side against a pallet of three other drums and a very small fuming cloud of
vapor developing from the area, but you cannot tell its exact point of origin. It
turns out that the drums are just inside the storage area building. You can see
that the drums on the pallet have flammable labels. The fourth flammable drum
has been knocked off the pallet and is also lying on its side next to the punctured
drum. The punctured drum has not been identified at this point – it is a strong
oxidizer, strong acid, or strong base raw material.
How do you proceed? What information are you after, how do you gather it, and
what instructions do you provide for your team? What hazardous situations are
you and your team facing? If you need to, you can differentiate these situations
depending on the punctured drum being a strong oxidizer, strong acid, or strong
base. Develop a brief priority list and a brief action list for what you should do.
What, if any, restraints should you exercise? What advice would you give to any
other individuals coming upon the scene? Do you call for an evacuation of any,
or all, of the plant itself? There are approximately 180 employees currently on
site during this first shift – located in different areas around the plant
(i.e., administrative offices, shipping and receiving, raw material bulk chemical
storage, finished product bulk chemical storage, production operations,
packaging operations, labs, and production/engineering offices).
