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ITC terminal fire

FartingMonk

By FartingMonk
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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105082

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Just now, Dewey said:

Been following this since yesterday, company, county and city still rolling with "everything is fine", as far as air quality goes. I was in League City yesterday, read that, walked outside to see the black smoke and thought "I dont know guys..."

Well, I mean, the air quality where there ISN'T smoke is fine.  That part of the air is a-ok.  So, like, on average, it's fine.

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FartingMonk

FartingMonk 3606

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Nah.  This is worst case scenario stuff.  Multiple plants have already lost their fire trucks.  Last night was when it took a turn for the worst.  Lots of friends in there on ERT.  It's basically foam and dump right now.  We were watching it live in the plant yesterday and all of us ERT guys said oh shit that tank is gonna give and 30 seconds later it was over with.  ITC isn't going to survive this. 

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 52487

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My foam sprayer on ERT shot about 20 feet maybe. Different animal than a tank farm though. You guys hearing the pop from pressure relief valves letting go?

the issues at the Pasadena plant I was at included a methanol soaked filter autoigniting in a dumpster, and a pump blowing up after overheating because the line it was supposed to be pumping hadn’t been opened. Shrapnel hit an electrical box and sparks ignited the fluid. Both were contained before getting out of hand. 

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FartingMonk

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The thing I was telling the guys on ERT is we aren't fire fighters like a lot of those guys claim to be.  Just because we go to TEEX once a year and capture fires.  Once shit gets real you're not gonna want to be anywhere near it.  I think a lot of those guys saw that last night.  Shit turned on them in about half a second.  

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FartingMonk

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Yeah.  The on scene guys were basically caught in a bind.  Plant firefighting is basically defensive firefighting.  That first tank was basically worst case scenario.  It was 95 percent full so dumping water and foam would have just spread the product out so they waited and wanted to let it burn.  Arm chair quarterbacking now says well we should've threw foam and control the fire by displacing it instead of letting the fire take control. 

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Rip76

Rip76 4925

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7 minutes ago, thestud said:

I’d have gone super thick foam, north of the standard 3% for hydrocarbons. Problem is with an elevated master stream you’re dumping 1250gpm on it and water isn’t what you need, it’s the foam blanket. Handlines would have been ideal for application but that’s not easy to do on that scale of an incident.

Given that I haven’t seen any tank breaches or a running river of flaming product, I’m willing to say that they’ve done better (whether it was on purpose or not is up for interpretation) than most would have done on this incident. Hindsight is always 20/20, best we can do is study the after action report and learn from it so as not to repeat the same mistakes (if any).

Actually yesterday, there was a bit of running product between tanks.

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wood

wood 11225

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They’re currently pouring a garden hose into Hell. There’s nothing they can do.

Looks like they're just trying to keep the steel of the tank as cool as possible while  letting the fire burn out, knowing that they can't put it out.

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FartingMonk

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1 hour ago, thestud said:

 

 


I’ll take “a bit” over an entire breach and a gushing river of running fire. Unless you’re being facetious and it was indeed some nirvana shit. I never saw anything of the sort on the news so I’m just going off of what I did see and none of what I heard. News media, no matter what affiliation, are absolutely horrid at reporting the actual facts.

 

 

3% foam doesn't exist anymore.  It's this super shitty foam now.  They found that foam had some cancer risk so 3M got out of the business.  

The hand line would've been ideal for the foam application but the tank that was first compromised was dead in the middle of the tank farm.  It would've been a death trap for the hose team.  Flammable liquid shooting out overhead with one egress spot and the more you displace that product the more vulnerable they are to a spill over of liquid.  It was an absolute nightmare scenario. 

 

Word is pump to the tank caught fire.  They couldn't capture it and it jumped to an open vent/hatch and ignited the fumes. 

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gmr548

gmr548 16576

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4 hours ago, joeycovers said:

It’s bad. I don’t understand how they lifted the shelter in place. I live in the area. Notthing but black smoke everywhere. Ashes falling from sky at the Deer Park courthouse. 

Between hearing a story like this or how people are reporting respiratory issues, the way ITC has operated, and the State of Texas being notoriously cozy with the energy industry, it is really hard to take the claims that the area is safe as legit. 

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Updawg

Updawg 2266

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Between hearing a story like this or how people are reporting respiratory issues, the way ITC has operated, and the State of Texas being notoriously cozy with the energy industry, it is really hard to take the claims that the area is safe as legit. 
Are you kidding, tceq will probably fine them $5000
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joeycovers

joeycovers 391

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All the green areas are quickly becoming yellow.  Fire not expected to stop until Wed at the earliest.  

Amazing that ashes are on in people’s cars and they say it’s ok. If it’s on your car it is in your lungs. 

What a cluster fuck and damage control being done everywhere. 

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FartingMonk

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46 minutes ago, gmr548 said:

Between hearing a story like this or how people are reporting respiratory issues, the way ITC has operated, and the State of Texas being notoriously cozy with the energy industry, it is really hard to take the claims that the area is safe as legit. 

Nah man.  You got so many independent agencies and media out there with air monitors if they even picked up a hint of it they would be all over it.  People are vocalizing symptoms now so they can document it when the class action happens. 

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FartingMonk

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1 hour ago, thestud said:

 

 


I’ve seen the articles and updates about it contaminating groundwater and being carcinogenic, but I hadn’t heard of it being discontinued as we still carry 25 gallons of Buckeye Platinum Class B on every rig. Went to look it up and I’ll be damned if the webpages don’t exist anymore on Buckeye’s website. Y’all are turbofucked without decent foam, Christ almighty.

Agreed on the death trap, glad they made the decisions that they did. We can suffer material losses, no need to kill people just to appease the board room. Saw where Siddons-Martin sent 5 EVT’s and some heavy apparatus down to help but they never mentioned that being due to lost equipment?

 

 

It's basically all hands on deck right now so everyone who can or thinks they can help are showing up.  ITC is going to end up footing the bill anyways. Yeah, right after midnight there was a call for more foam we knew shit was getting bad, but it wasn't until this morning when the guys being relieved walked back in told us how bad it actually got.  

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joeycovers

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17 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Nah man.  You got so many independent agencies and media out there with air monitors if they even picked up a hint of it they would be all over it.  People are vocalizing symptoms now so they can document it when the class action happens. 

Ashes falling from the sky are not vocalizing symptoms.  

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Leeroy Jenkins

Leeroy Jenkins 2402

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It's basically all hands on deck right now so everyone who can or thinks they can help are showing up.  ITC is going to end up footing the bill anyways. Yeah, right after midnight there was a call for more foam we knew shit was getting bad, but it wasn't until this morning when the guys being relieved walked back in told us how bad it actually got.  


Fuck these types of fires. I don’t like having to worry about the ph level of my runoff water.
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gsoda3

gsoda3 3251

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Yeah I would venture to say this is a once in a career fire for those guys but I’m not jealous of them at all. I’ve been on an MC-306 fire and that was less than 9,000 gallons of gas. My biggest concern would be container failure and a running river of flaming product taking out firefighters and fire apparatus. The shitty thing about AR-AFFF is you have to get pretty damn close to the fire to apply it. Those boys have a set of stones on them or they’re nuckin futs. Or both.
Serious question- can firefighters say "i'm not going in there, it's too dangerous"?
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FartingMonk

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18 minutes ago, joeycovers said:

Ashes falling from the sky are not vocalizing symptoms.  

I'm not saying there aren't people suffering from symptoms.  There isn't a magic fence line blocking the smoke but you got people from as far as Galveston complaining about headaches.  

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FartingMonk

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10 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:
8 hours ago, thestud said:



Yeah I would venture to say this is a once in a career fire for those guys but I’m not jealous of them at all. I’ve been on an MC-306 fire and that was less than 9,000 gallons of gas. My biggest concern would be container failure and a running river of flaming product taking out firefighters and fire apparatus. The shitty thing about AR-AFFF is you have to get pretty damn close to the fire to apply it. Those boys have a set of stones on them or they’re nuckin futs. Or both.

Read more  

Serious question- can firefighters say "i'm not going in there, it's too dangerous"?

Fuck yeah you can.  You can say hey look at that pattern we are gonna have a collapse.  The only time a firefighter is going to put himself in danger is if there is the possibility of someone inside.  But then after a certain time.  You have to make the assumption they are already dead.  Let the structure burn to the ground

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Rip76

Rip76 4925

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3 hours ago, thestud said:

 

 


I’ll take “a bit” over an entire breach and a gushing river of running fire. Unless you’re being facetious and it was indeed some nirvana shit. I never saw anything of the sort on the news so I’m just going off of what I did see and none of what I heard. News media, no matter what affiliation, are absolutely horrid at reporting the actual facts.

 

 

It was "a bit," like I said.

Watching live helicopter feed.

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UT_OB1

UT_OB1 2217

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My wife saw the article on the news this morning saying it might take until Wednesday to be put out and i laughed. Next Wednesday, maybe. 

Also, I believe those are 88000 gallon tanks. At least seven of them. TCEQ isn’t going to have to fine them. The amount of money being lost right now is obscene. 

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SHOOTER12

SHOOTER12 8800

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28 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Something really bad must have happened.  Our camera inside the control room just showed a fireball that must have been at least 500 feet in the air.  Man I hope everyone is ok

Does anyone have a link for these various cameras? I spent an hour digging through Transtar camera feeds earlier and never did find the correct one that would show anything. Thanks in advance if you got it.

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