NEAFC 31st Annual Conference.pdf - New England Association of ...

NE,W ENGLAND ASSOCIATION OF FIRE CHIEFS
All personnel from the .Civilian War Aid Division and Medical Division were
relieved of further duty andi all doctors, nurses and medical personnel returned to
private practice and duty in the various hospitals to which they were assigned.
Food, clothing, medical supplies and assistance started pouring into this Headquarters.
Many of the contributors will never be known. Like the many hundreds of
persons who rendered valuable assistance to the victims in the field, they met the tragic
disaster, mastered it, then: quietly faded out of the picture. This type Of person can
be found in every city and town in this country, and they are the ones who make the
United States the greatest country in the world in which.-to live.
"LET’S KEEP IT THAT WAY".
PRESIDENT MOLLOY: Thank you very much, Lt. Maloney.
Our next speaker, this morning is All~n J. Johnson, Consulting Mechanical Engineer,
Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Mr. Johnson. (Applause.)
MR. JOHNSON: My subject is "The Fire and Explosion Hazards of Gaseous
Fuels." Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I feel very humble indeed pounding
the floor in a group such as this with a subject that is probably clcser to you than it
could possibly be to any layman such as myself, and that is the hazards of fire explosions
from natural gas. Nevertheless, this is a subject which is somewhat new to this
pair of the country and therefore if I can succeed in throwing just a little light on it
and give you any new thoughts whatsoever, my mission has. been accomplishedi. Any
industry must stand on its own legs and no matter how it ’protests safety, the records
speak for themselves.
In the case of natural gas industry the record is a poor one. I know I am going
to be criticized all over the lot by the gas people. Nevertheless, I hope ~o back it up
with facts and theories. At the behest of one of your Massachusetts Congressmen,
the Federal Power Commission asked them to. Of the sixty-two companies only twentysix
replied and they reported 1700 pipeline breaks and accidents, which is not trivial,
especially when it is considered that the largest of these damaged more than 314 feet
of pipe. I saw that pipe afterwards. It was a 30:inch pipe; it threwit all cver just as
you would throw confetti at a wedding.
I was very much startled at the record of gas fires and explosions. I noted that
out of twenty-eight listed causes for fires, and explosions that gas, natural and manufactured;
that is, out of twenty-eight causes natural gas was twenty-first. In the average
loss out of twenty-eight causes it wa.s twenty-sixth. Yet in another table in that very
same handbook gas explosions were second only to airplane accidents in the number
of lives lost. Airplane accidents counted for 861 lives; natural gas, 812 lives, it being
second! with only one in the same group as far as fatalities--asphyxiation, smoke and
suffocation, 802. Some of the asphyxiations were from manufactured and natural gas,
so I don’t think it is exaggerating when I saw with the asphyxiations, gas disasters could
easily make up the 49 necessary fatalities in order to make gas the greatest single
destroyer in the United States. Therefore, it behooves us to look upon gas as being
something that we can consider to be a hazard. ;~
(Mr. Johnson went on to read his prepared paper.)
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