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posted by martyb on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the mount-generators-on-a-barge? dept.

Residents near a chemical plant in Crosby, TX — approximately 25 miles (40km) northeast of Houston — have been evacuated due to the possibility of an explosion:

Arkema SA expects chemicals to catch fire or explode at its heavily flooded plant in Crosby, Texas in the coming days because the plant has lost power to its chemical cooling systems, a company official said on Wednesday.

The company evacuated remaining workers on Tuesday, and Harris County ordered the evacuation of residents in a 1.5-mile(2.4-km) radius of the plant that makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.

Richard Rowe, chief executive officer of Arkema's North America unit, told reporters that chemicals on the site will catch fire and explode if they are not properly cooled.

Arkema expects that to happen within the next six days as temperatures rise. He said the company has no way to prevent that because the plant is swamped by about 6 feet (1.83 m) of water due to flooding from Harvey, which came ashore in Texas last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane.

"Materials could now explode and cause a subsequent and intense fire. The high water that exists on site, and the lack of power, leave us with no way to prevent it," Rowe said. He said he believes a fire would be "largely sustained on our site but we are trying to be conservative."

From the company's web site:

Our Crosby facility makes organic peroxides, a family of compounds that are used in everything from making pharmaceuticals to construction materials. But organic peroxides may burn if not stored and handled under the right conditions. At Crosby, we prepared for what we recognized could be a worst case scenario. We had redundant contingency plans in place. Right now, we have an unprecedented 6 feet of water at the plant. We have lost primary power and two sources of emergency backup power. As a result, we have lost critical refrigeration of the materials on site that could now explode and cause a subsequent intense fire. The high water and lack of power leave us with no way to prevent it. We have evacuated our personnel for their own safety. The federal, state and local authorities were contacted a few days ago, and we are working very closely with them to manage this matter. They have ordered the surrounding community to be evacuated, too.

Also at ABC and The Washington Post.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Geezer on Thursday August 31 2017, @11:44AM (1 child)

    by Geezer (511) on Thursday August 31 2017, @11:44AM (#562066)

    " Its often cheaper to insure than to design to address an unlikely peril."

    Exactly this. The automotive industry is famous for safety analyses that compare the cost of safety measures to the cost of an expected number of wrongful death claims. The Pinto gas tank is a well-known example.

    Rightly or wrongly, almost every endeavor from getting out of bed in the morning to space travel involves some sort of risk analysis, with probabilities ranging from near-zero to near-certain. Is that tin of sardines you're about to eat the one in a hundred million that has salmonella contamination?

    That doesn't excuse stupid engineers or greedy stakeholders, especially when mercenary underwriters are willing to roll someone else's dice.

    It's called good judgement, reasonableness, and sometimes blind, dumb luck.

    We have juries and legions of tort lawyers to decide the fine points of difference.

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  • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday September 01 2017, @02:11PM

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Friday September 01 2017, @02:11PM (#562506)

    To be fair, a lot less people die as a result of the greed of these insurance companies, because they honestly don't care if you live or die, and neither do the legions of lawyers who the then-dead poor and working class folks wouldn't be able to hire for prosecution.

    As an electrician who has, on occassion, griped about particular requirements of the National Electrical Code, I realize that almost every rule and regulation within it was interred as a result of "Too many people dying this year from that" and that the NEC was formed, largely, due to insurance companies paying out for houses constantly burning down at the onset of electrical distribution. Arguably, they played an equal role to the labor unions.
    Take the change of requirements for GFCI receptacles in garages - used to be you could leave the garage door opener receptacle and a refrigerator or electric washer/dryer receptacle without that protection. Well, too many people died, or too many houses burned down, so now every single outlet has to be protected. Sure, the GFCI companies love that they can make more money off of selling more receptacles, but hey, the end result is safer installations. Same with fuse boxes - they could be bypassed unsafely, and you'd have exposed voltage there all the time. Now, we have circuit breakers due to greed.