The simple answer is yes. Georgia had a state fire code regulating liquid and gaseous nitrogen in January 2021, when the Foundation Food Group (FFG) accident occurred in Gainesville, Georgia.
What was in effect in January 2021?
Georgia’s State Minimum Fire Safety Standards had statewide force of law. The Georgia rules expressly state that the State Fire Marshal’s rules establish the state’s minimum fire-safety requirements and have statewide application without requiring local adoption.
At that time, Georgia’s fire-safety framework incorporated NFPA 55, Compressed Gases and Cryogenic Fluids Code. So the answer is unequivocally YES; Georgia had an enforceable fire-code framework governing compressed gases and cryogenic fluids, including nitrogen, before the January 28, 2021 FFG accident.
But here’s the critical issue
The FFG accident involved liquid nitrogen being released inside an occupied building. The CSB’s investigation found that:
- LN₂ overflowed from an immersion freezer.
- It rapidly vaporized.
- The nitrogen accumulated in a partially enclosed lower-level room.
- The room did not have mechanical ventilation.
- The resulting oxygen-deficient atmosphere killed the workers.
- There was no atmospheric monitoring/alarm system adequate to warn workers of the oxygen-deficient condition.
The CSB subsequently recommended that NFPA 55 be changed to specifically require atmospheric monitoring for cryogenic asphyxiants and to address emergency isolation-valve controls. The CSB’s recommendation was directly based on the FFG incident.
In other words:
NFPA 55 existed, but the accident exposed a gap between having a code governing cryogenic gases and having sufficiently specific requirements for an LN₂ release from process equipment inside an occupied workplace.
The distinction I would make
If we’re investigating whether FFG was operating in violation of a Georgia fire code requirement, we need to be much more precise than simply saying: “NFPA 55 regulated nitrogen; therefore, FFG violated NFPA 55.
That may not necessarily be true.
The real questions are:
- Which edition of NFPA 55 had Georgia legally adopted on January 28, 2021?
- What did that edition actually require for LN₂ process equipment?
- Did those requirements apply to the immersion freezer?
- Was the freezer considered a cryogenic fluid system, a process appliance, or something else?
- What did the code require for the room where the freezer was installed?
- Was oxygen-deficiency monitoring required?
- Was mechanical ventilation required?
- Were emergency shutoff/isolation provisions required?
- Were those requirements applicable to an existing installation?
- And separately, what did OSHA require of FFG as the employer?
The CSB itself is significant evidence here because its final investigation concluded that the incident involved “lack of regulatory coverage” in addition to equipment/design and management deficiencies.
PLEASE refer to my other articles on this matter where I discuss the specific requirements of Chapter 50, 53, and 55.