NEAFC 32nd Annual Conference.pdf - New England Association of ...

[NEw ENGLAND ASSOCIATION OF FIRE CHIEFS
And, instead of going into the areas, where storage of any kind is, the
men go in there and they spread one trapaulin,-and they may have one man,
and he may or may not be a good fire watcher. It goes along, and sometime
afterwards, a spark has done some-damage, and frequently, it is. too late.
So that in storehouses in particular, when yo u go into them, we feel that
you should stress the idea of the danger that can come from illicit or, you
might say, widespread carelessness in the matter of industrial and cutting
and welding fires.
X~Te have other phases of cutting and welding fires. For example, there
is the cutting and welding around tanks, used for inflammable liquid. There
are areas where there are dust collectors and that sort ~of thing. And, these
things are important, because many times they cause untold damage, where,
instead of going through and following the time-honored practice of filling
the tanks with .water, or carefully watching them go out, or doing the other
things which can be done, the men do not do that, and the net result is that
we have trouble.
So that the cutting and welding fires, are important, I don’t want to
take too long on these; but, frankly, there are too many of them.
The next particular group that I want to .speak about in the matter of
fire hazards, are those that result from a chemical origin. Actually, these
chemicals may come in contact with other materials. Then, there are the unstable
chemicals, which decompose at room temperatures.
Many chemical processes, particularly those involved in the organic
materials, require very careful regulation. Unless the temperatures, pressures,
the quantity and quality of the ingredients are properly controlled, fire explosions
do result. These accidents occur in laboratories, in the test tubes, beakers
and flasks, and in the plant processing equipment. They are the focal spots
for our attention, as we go through the plants.
The fires and explosions, which have occurred in kettles and digestors, stills
and autoclaves and that sort of thing are ones which can. be prevented, and
they can be prevented by proper supervision.
And, as you can see, there is so much of all of this fire prevention effort
that comes back directly to supervision, the supervision of the human element,
or, frankly, to put it another way, it is. the failure of the human element to
appreciate the tremendous hazard which they have at their finger tips, much in
the same way that many of us, when we are seated behind the wheel of a nice
new car which has a 165 or 195 horse-power engine, we don’t really know
the potential we have for destruction. And, the production people don’t recognize
the terrific hazard, the potential for destruction, and that is where it comes
in.
There is also the confinement hazard, in the matter of some pharmaceuticals,
including the amino compounds. We have a case where some of these
amino compounds were being processed in a steel, glass-lined reactor, and this
uncontrolled reactor caused an explosion, and the building was damaged.
I have many other cases that I could tell you about, but I couldn’t even
pronounce some of these things on the list, here; I don’t even know what they
are. I took chemistry in school; we all did. But, I believe that these men
w_orking with these things should be informed and they must be aware of
the possibilities-that they have. They must look further than just immediate
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