UPDATED 9/11/12 with CCTV video footage showing the steam release, followed by the flash fire, followed by te dark smoke.
CSB photos showing the size of the vapor cloud. The photos should be credited to Fototaker.net and were taken from Pier 39 in San Francisco located about nine miles across the bay from the Chevron Richmond Refinery. I can say 100% that thewhite vapor we see in the photos is NOT flammable vapor, but you can draw your own conclusions – CLICK HERE. Chevron feels that the cloud may have been steam from firefighting efforts and I would tend to agree with this more so than the white cloud is flammable vapor. (Click Here for news update).
Here is the BEST VIDEO I have seen that can show everyone how a vapor cloud ignites and to give us all some perspective of what the workers were experiencing on 8/6/2012. (Note: In the video you can see to the right of the screen the person with the flare walking just beyond the vapor as it travels across the ground off of the pooled LNG on the left side of the screen. He/She then throws the flare through the cloud and ignites the vapor, as you then see the flare coming out of the cloud and rolling across the ground as the vapor ignites.)
I am sharing these photos via the Contra Costa Times news feed to give everyone a up close perspective of what an industrial flammable liquids fire is capable of in a very short period of time. The photos also show the refinery’s new fire truck (pumper) burned down to its frame, which I had not seen in any of the media reports up to this date. All PRELIMINARY indications coming from the CSB are that an 8″ pipe catastrophically failed and that the workers in the area at the time of the release were investigating a leak from this pipe. There is a great photo showing the failed pipe within the process. THANKLY no one was seriously injured. I am waiting to hear if FRC’s played a positive role in protecting those workers caught in the release.