Industrial Fire Prevention

ISHN 2015 Article Video Player Cal Ripken brings a new safety message to ISHNtv : On an average day in America, there are over 200 workplace fires causing hundreds of fatalities and thousands more injuries. In this video Cal Ripken, Jr. gives you some tips to help you prevent workplace fires and ensure the safety of your workers. Brought to you by Northern Safety , which offers a full line of safety and industrial products. Here: ISHN 2015 Article Video Player

From Northern Safety News & Information - Northern Safety Co., Inc. Portable fire extinguisher basics Fires can be dangerous and costly, and a portable fire extinguisher can be an effective tool to help control or put out early-stage fires. Fire extinguishers are classified by the type of fire they will extinguish and include: • Class A: Water, used for fires involving ordinary combustibles such as paper, cloth, wood, rubber, and many plastics • Class B: CO2, used for fires involving flammable liquids such as oils, gas, some paints, lacquers, grease, and solvents • Class C: Dry chemical, used for fires involving electrical equipment such as wiring, fuse boxes, energized electrical machinery, computers, or other electrical items • Class ABC: Multi-purpose, can be used for most fires involving ordinary combustibles, flammable liquids, or electrical equipment • Class D: Used for fires involving powders, flakes, or shavings of metals such as magnesium, ti...

From Hemming Group Ltd New free Post-Blast Response training video from the Firefighters Support Foundation Published:  25 November, 2015 The Firefighters Support Foundation’s (FSF) newest training program,  Post-Blast Response  is now available free of charge. Presented by August Vernon, an emergency management subject matter expert, the 32-minute video accompanies a 47-slide PowerPoint presentation. The video explains why post-blast response is an important subject for firefighters, EMTs, search and rescue, and other emergency management  personnel.  It describes the actions and tactics to be employed immediately after the blast is called in, while arriving on scene, during the first critical minutes, and throughout what will certainly be a  lengthy investigation. ‘This program also describes ways in which various the public safety agencies need to work together and describes critical elements of the ICS system that will play a key role,’ sai...

Report Finds 85 Fatalities in The Chemicals Industry Last Year Fri, 11/06/2015 - 3:38pm Andy Szal, Digital Reporter A British chemical engineering group said this week that serious accidents in the U.S. chemical and processing industries resulted in 85 fatalities and more than 600 serious injuries in 2014. The Institution of Chemical Engineers, a professional membership organization, surveyed media coverage of explosions, fires and other incidents in the U.S. last year. The analysis found 228 separate incidents in chemical manufacturing and a number of related industries, including mining, refining, food processing, biotechnology, wastewater treatment, and oil and gas exploration and production. "Many of these incidents commanded just a few column inches, but there are 75 reports that detail fatalities," said Andy Furlong, the group's policy director. "Each one is a grim human tragedy that could have been avoided, had the appropriate safety ...

National Fire Protection Association Blog NFPA 652 - new combustible dust standard Susan Bershad is a Senior Chemical Engineer in the Industrial and Chemical Engineering division at NFPA® and is also the staff liaison for the Combustible Dust project . Susan has been working diligently on NFPA 652 which has the following scope: “This standard shall provide the basic principles of and requirements for identifying and managing the fire and explosion hazards of combustible dusts and particulate solids.” I had a few minutes to talk to Susan about the challenges and importance of the document and about a training event she is hosting on December 3 about NFPA 652 . Q: What was your biggest technical challenge with updating the NFPA 652? A: The biggest challenge for the committee with NFPA 652 was identifying those requirements that are fundamental to all facilities and processes where combustible dust hazards are possible. Q: How is NFPA 652 different from NFPA 654 ...

The OSHA Defense Report OSHA Law Updates from the OSHA Practice Group at Conn Maciel Carey   Breaking News – OSHA Max Penalties Set to Nearly Double November 9, 2015 By Eric J. Conn , Chair of Conn Maciel Carey’s national OSHA Practice Group For as long as I have been practicing OSHA law (more than 15 years now), four things have remained constant: The maximum per violation penalty that OSHA has been permitted by the OSH Act to assign to Serious violations has been $7,000, and for Repeat or Willful violations it has remained $70,000; The Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA makes an annual pilgrimage to the Hill where he or she pounds on the table and demands that Congress enact OSHA reform legislation to increase the maximum penalties OSHA can assign (with common refrains like: “employers can be fined more for mistreating cattle on federal lands than for allowing an employee fatality!”); There has been one iteration or another of such reform ...

From Woodworking Network Was Extra Fine Wood Dust Factor in Mill Fires and Explosions? By Bill Esler October 10, 2015 | 8:17 pm EDT Aerial photograph of the east side of the Babine sawmill. The large yellow arrow indicates the easterly direction of the explosion’s  expansion from the point of origin. Source: WorkSafeBC incident  report, January 2012. BURNABY, BC - A trend to finer wood dust - resulting from dryer beetle killed wood and finer-kerf saw blades - may have contributed to a series of fires and plant explosions in British Columbia mills and wood products factories. A 2012 internal memo from WorkSafeBC, released through a Freedom of Information request, also predicted industry resistance to wood dust control rules  "if an enforcement strategy is pursued at this time." WorkSafeBC circulated an internal document stating the agency was concerned that an enforcement strategy to address wood dust in sawmill...

FromPowder/Bulk Solids Four Steps to Control Combustible Dust in Your Plant Hi-Vac manifold piping system to help clean up chips and cuttings from machine centers According to the Spring 2015 Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs report, combustible dust explosions have been an OSHA focus for years. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reported in late 2006 that 199 workers had died in 2005 alone as a result of combustible dust events. OSHA has increasingly focused on how to prevent explosions caused by combustible dust. Together with the U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA published a bulletin in November 2014 titled, “Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions.” According to the bulletin, there are three components of a dust explosion, and those are dust, an ignition source (usually heat), and oxygen in the air that helps the fire spread rapidly. Together with hazard assessment, OSHA suggests in the bul...

From Powder/Bulk Solids NFPA Introduces NFPA 652 Combustible Dust Standard July 27, 2015 Every year, destructive and deadly dust-related fires and explosions affect a wide range of industries around the world. In the United States alone, 50 combustible dust accidents occurred between 2008 and 2012. To manage the dust-related fire, flash fire, and explosion hazards in industries that use dust collection and handling equipment, or have processes that may generate combustible dust, the  National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) introduces the first-time NFPA 652: Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust. This important new Standard serves a wide variety of industries including chemical, wood  processing, metals, and agricultural. In addition to providing new general requirements for managing combustible dust fire and explosion hazards, NFPA 652 directs users to NFPA's appropriate industry- or commodity-specific standards, such as NFPA 61: Prevent...

From Powder/Bulk Solids ACC Publishes 2015 Guide to Chemical Industry The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has issued its 2015 edition of the Guide to the Business of Chemistry, a detailed economic profile of the chemistry industry and its contributions to the U.S. and world economies. American chemistry is the global leader in production, providing over fifteen percent of the world’s chemicals and representing 14 percent of all U.S. exports. It is also one of America’s largest manufacturing industries, an $801 billion enterprise providing 804,000 high-paying jobs. For every one chemistry industry job, 6.3 others are generated in other sectors of the economy, including construction, transportation, and agriculture, totaling nearly six million chemistry-dependent jobs. “The business of chemistry is the building block for everything around us,” said the publication’s lead author, ACC chief economist Kevin Swift. “Supporting nearly 25 percent of the U.S. GDP, the b...

From The National Law Review OSHA Clarifies Enforcement Guidance on Combustible Dust posted on: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration , responding to a request of the National Forest and Paper Association , has updated its compliance guidance on how inspectors are to evaluate accumulated levels of low bulk-density combustible dusts for enforcement purposes. The guidance  was released by OSHA on May 22. The Association asked OSHA to explain to the agency’s inspectors that they should consider the unique characteristics of a dust ‒ such as its bulk density ‒ instead of basing assessments on whether dust accumulation simply surpasses 1/32 of an inch (about the diameter of a paper clip), an OSHA spokesperson told Bloomberg BNA. OSHA’s compliance guidance for its seven-year-old National Emphasis Program (NEP) for combustible dust references 1/32-inch dust accumulation levels. However, OSHA made clear in the latest g...

From our friends at Baghouse.com How to Avoid Undersizing a Baghouse Dust Collection System Dust collector OEMs constantly try to come in with bids lower than competitors. In an attempt to do so, some baghouse manufacturers offer undersized systems. This article discusses what customers can do to avoid accepting a bid for an inadequately-sized baghouse dust collection system. By Dominick DalSanto Dust Collection Expert & Sales Director Baghouse.com ”I’m sorry, but the other supplier came in lower than you. We went with their proposal over yours.” I think there are few things I hate hearing more than those words in my position in baghouse sales. I can respect a client who has found a better deal on a comparable system. But I am upset when I hear that my competition came in with a bid lower than mine by recommending a grossly undersized system. As a sales professional, this particularly exasperates me as I feel these OEMs abuse the level of trust pl...

From Occupational Health & Safety  Combustible Dust Vacuums Save Lives and Property Implementing a housekeeping routine to mitigate combustible dust minimizes explosion risk. By David Kennedy / May 01, 2015 According to a 2012 report by the NFPA, there were an estimated 8,600 structural fires reported to U.S. fire departments each year at industrial or manufacturing properties between 2006 and 2010. Dust, fiber, or lint (including sawdust) accounted for 12 percent of the items first ignited, just behind flammable or combustible liquids and gases, which topped the list at 13 percent. When fugitive dust is unchecked, these fires can quickly escalate into catastrophic secondary dust explosions, causing devastating injury, death, and property damage. Shocking cases like the Imperial Sugar dust explosion that injured 42 and killed 14 and the Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products explosion in China last August that killed 146 people stand out most in the public eye, ...

From Harrington Group, Inc. NFPA 652: Standard on Fundamentals of Combustible Dust is Coming! Posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2015  This summer, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) will issue NFPA 652: Standard on Fundamentals of Combustible Dust . Though NFPA had previously developed several standards addressing combustible dust, those standards were more industry or commodity specific and have often contained different, and sometimes conflicting, requirements. NFPA 652 will consolidate the basic requirements among the existing dust standards and will apply to all industries that are exposed to combustible dust hazards. It will help overcome problems in following the current combustible dust standards by providing guidance to identify and manage fire and explosion hazards caused by combustible dusts. It will also direct users to the combustible dust standards that are specific to their industry or commodity. The need...

"Near the end of the day shift on Jan. 19, 2012, a saw on the large headrig Roche operated "deviated" throwing up sparks and lighting the nearby sawdust. That's not unheard of in a sawmill, but this time it also sent a burst of flame high enough to nearly hit the ceiling as it climbed the sawdust floating in the air." Lakeland inquest fraught with controversy -  from The Working Forest, Your #1 source for forestry and forest industry news, and the Prince George Citizen By: Prince George Citizen Set to resume next month, plenty of ground has already been covered over the two-and-a-half weeks the coroner's inquest into the fatal Lakeland Mills sawmill explosion has been held so far. By the time it was temporarily adjourned on March 26, the inquest had heard from 47 witnesses, beginning with the widows of Al Little and Glenn Roche, who died from the extensive burns they suffered in the April 23, 2012 blast. Another 22 people were injured, many seriou...

MERCOR TECRESA - The Thrower Extinguisher A Japanese company has developed an extinguisher which is activated when it is thrown into the flames and, as we can see in the video, it extinguish the fire.   The container holds a blue liquid which, when released, it is scattered on the fire area releasing the ammonium that acts as a fire retardant. This mixture all together the carbon dioxide generated by the fire extinguish it.

From NFPA Journal and NFPA.org - Credible Risk, March April 2015 PREPARING A NEW NFPA STANDARD requires a mixture of ingredients, some provided by the public and the technical committee, others provided by NFPA staff. The aim is that, in the end, we have developed a meaningful document that benefits the targeted occupancy or addresses a particular hazard. The path to completion can sometimes be unusual, as was the case with the new NFPA 652, Fundamentals of Combustible Dust , which is due to be issued this summer. To ensure that certain deadlines were met, NFPA’s editorial team resorted to humor to catch my attention. I love soccer, and was fortunate to spend time in Brazil last summer at the FIFA World Cup, where I followed the progress of the U.S. side through the so-called “group of death.” When I returned to work, one of the tasks at the top of my list was to review the edits to the Second Revisions for NFPA 652 prior to balloting the committee. To help put me in the prop...