This question is one that gets a lot of attention, and the debate can become heated. OSHA’s minimum standard, written in 1974, requires the fire watch to be maintained for 30-minutes after completion of welding or cutting operations. But in the past decade, many insurers and more up-to-date standards now require that fire watches be maintained for 1 hour.
1910.252(a)(2)(iii)(B) Fire watchers shall have fire extinguishing equipment readily available and be trained in its use. They shall be familiar with facilities for sounding an alarm in the event of a fire. They shall watch for fires in all exposed areas, try to extinguish them only when obviously within the capacity of the equipment available, or otherwise sound the alarm. A fire watch shall be maintained for at least a half hour after completion of welding or cutting operations to detect and extinguish possible smoldering fires.
A fair number of people still feel that 30 minutes is adequate, but the data tells us otherwise. Case in point, this most recent HW Fire with losses of $16,460,850.
- The HW was reported to have ended at 3:20 pm.
- Fire Watch reported staying on duty till 4:20.
- A security guard walked by the ship @ 9:21 and 9:26 and noticed nothing.
- At 10:32 pm a passing motorist noticed smoke and an orange glow and called 911.
The root cause of the fire…
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the fire aboard the fish processor Aleutian Falcon was the company’s supervisory personnel inadequately planning for hot work, as well as shoreside workers’ inadequately protecting hot work areas, allowing slag from hot work to ignite combustible material near an insulated wooden bulkhead of a walk-in refrigerator that had not been removed or sufficiently protected. Contributing to the casualty was the ineffective communication between the supervisory personnel, marine chemist, and workers.
Please see my other articles on Hot Work and Fire Watches by using the search box in the upper right corner of the website.
CLICK HERE for the NTSB report