Today I spent the day helping a company, insurance investigator and fire marshal investigate a Hot Work (HW) fire at a facility. The facility swore up and down that they follow their hotwork procedures to the letter and that there is no way that hotwork could cause the fire. When it came my time to speak I tried to explain that no hotwork procedure and permit is 100%, because humans write the procedures, humans train other humans on the procedures, and humans are responsible for meeting the requirements in the SOP. With this much human interaction, there is always an opportunity for errors. They could not see the light so I had to show them the light. We audited just three HW jobs and their permits and found at least four major mistakes in all three.
Here they are:
1) the fire watches (all contractors) had never been trained in the actual use of fire extinguishers. Their argument was he is X years old, what kind of training does he need. When I asked the FW what P.A.S.S. stands for they did not know. When I asked them what type of fires their extinguishers were rated for, they did not know the correct answers. The FW’s also did not know how to sound the facility fire alarm in the event of a fire. Both of these are violations of NFPA 51B and 1910.252(a)(2)(iii)(B).
2) Two of the three fire extinguishers the fire watches were using in the event of a fire were DEAD, none had their annual maintenance servicing since 1998, much less the monthly inspections.
3) Within 5 feet of the actual point of one of the hotwork jobs was a drainage trench from the room next door…where they process solvents and were actually in the process of dumping a reactor before I stopped them. I could smell solvents when we walked up. The fire watch was also responsible for monitoring the atm with a gas meter, yet he did not even know how to turn it on, so it had not been used all day long. Sparks were landing in the trench. Luckily there was no solvent liquid or vapors present. Here is the WHOPPER…no one at the facility understood vapor density and that their vapors are heavier than air and would settle and travel along the trench and accumulate in the trench to their LEL. Finally the insurance safety guy stepped in and confirmed what I was telling them was factual.
4) None of the areas that were permitted were actually inspected by the person who approved the permit. Fire Marshal was steaming mad on this find. All permits were obtained from the supervisor office in a different building. The permit was not even obtained by one of the actual crew members, but rather their supervisor got it from the facility supervisor and then passed it on to the contractor crew leader. Now I am not so bad as to split hairs between 30 and 35 feet, but I will not accept 15-20 feet for compliance with the 35 ft. rule. Also, plastic is comustible and wooden pallets of plastics drums of IPA can be moved! They are not to be covered with PLASTIC tarps!! There is a big difference between plastic tarps from K-Marts Blue Light special in the auto department and FM/UL approved welding blankets. Covering several dozen plastic drums of alcohol with plastic tarps instead of moving them outside the 35′ fire safe area is NOT even close to acceptable.
AUDIT AUDIT AUDIT your hotwork field practices to assure that we do not end up like these poor guys. The sad thing is that about 70 people will loose their jobs because of this fire and this plant is in a very small community and their are no other jobs with benefits like this company provides anywhere near by. The insurance company may not pay out for the fire after what they found in their cause and origin investigation (they too said it was HW fire). Managements response to our audits…we just caught them on a bad day and everyone’s mind is distracted because of the fire. The insurance and state fire marshal were calibrating them as me and my team were leaving for the day.