I Can’t Breathe – IOTW Report

I Can’t Breathe

Sunday, 12 February 2023, 21:01 BFH Uncategorized 11

11 Comments on I Can’t Breathe

  1. “Michael S. Regan was sworn in as the 16th Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency on March 11, 2021, becoming the first Black man and second person of color to lead the U.S. EPA.”

    I’m sure this guy and Mayor Pete are working diligently around the clock to clean up this mess. (and by mess I mean jailing reporters, ect.) What a flipping SH*t Show.

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  7. “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
    -Some writer for ST:TNG

    …Whatever you may think of SyFy series or the actors in them, I invite you to contemplate the truth of that statement in the context of massive emergencies like this.

    I already went into the ins and outs of fighting volitile chemical pressurized tank fires and the extreme BLEVE hazards they present, so I won’t repeat. Bear in mind too that this is not a large city with a large FD and there are rarely hydrants on railroad tracks, so resource management is a huge problem. In a situation like this without unlimited resources, a sort of scene triage has to be made where ALL choices are bed, but some are worse than others. This is a classic “Oh, SHIT!” run, so known because the cops show up and say “OH, SHIT!”, the First Responder shows up and says “OH, SHIT!”, the first-in engine shows up and says “OH, SHIT!”, and so on. You have a moment with overwhelming emergencies where you need a second you don’t have to make decisions, but the fire isn’t waiting so ANY decision is generally better than NONE, and can usually be made to work if you pursue it.

    I don’t know what conversations were had between the FD and CHEMTREC, what advice was given, who ultimately made the decision (all of which will end up in the NTSB report a few years from now), but the FD is NOT expert on all things chemical and so would likely have leaned heavily on that advice to the extent they felt it best mitigated risks to personnel and population.

    You can;
    1) Do nothing, evacuate a very large area, and hope it burns itself out without exploding. Probably safest from a local standpoint but its tough to evacuate even small areas and KEEP them empty, and leave us not forget about the toxic plume covering several states. A terrible choice, a cowardly choice, not a choice that will play well in Peoria, and so not likely to be taken.
    2) Pour water on the fire and hope to extinguish it quickly before anything else blows up. The most obvious for those who think the FD exists to “Put wet on red”, and it MAY work IF its an exposed fire with plenty of water available, good penetration to the heart of the fire possible, and a chemical that is ameniable to this form of extinguishment and doesn’t produce temps that will melt your SCBA mask. BUT, if you have flame impingement on other tanks, maybe in places you don’t see, another may blow up while you’re dealing with the first, so you’re going to need exposure protection as well. This is a LOT of people and a LOT of water to do all that as some of your water will be vaporized even before making contact, and don’t forget that all that water will be SPREADING THE CHEMICAL around the area, causing additional hazards of a sudden flare if it floats and extreme harards to groundwater if it don’t. And even if you put it out, its a LOT of volitile chemical UNDER PRESSURE that’s STILL going to be going up in the air and down in the ground, and probably pretty poisonous to BOTH. All the while you’re running tanker shuttles and have personnel who can stay in air a half-hour to an hour at best that you’re going to have to rotate in and out and a town you need to evacuate and guard that is NOT going to stop having emergencies of its OWN (lots of people, particularly old folks, will have chest pains and breathing problems, real and imagined, after seeing the news) AND you get to do this with the resources of a Tinytown FD and PD. That’s a LOT of manpower in a little place, and you can’t strip the surrounding towns for Mutual Aid because THEY will still have emergencies as well.

    So, sometimes the best course is
    …

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  8. …especially if it’s on advice of CHEMTREC and ALSO the EPA (who you are REQURIED to contact for large emergencies) is to have a controlled release and a controlled burn so you can flare off the chemical to keep it from being a continuing hazard and to disperse it as widely as possible to keep it from being a concentrated hazard to the ground water, all the while spraying the SURROUNDING vessels to keep THEM from becoming involved and flaring THEM off as needed.

    Yes, this can put disagreeable things into the air that may get on cars, houses, lungs, etc., but it may be the best of bad choices, and the choice that does the greatest good for the greatest number. There’s a saying with environmental hazard mitigation that “The Solution To Pollution Is Dilution”, so the wider the area you can disperse it with its volitile component removed by the flaring, the better off everyone is likely to be. Plume management and downwind evacuations need to be handled on an intergovermental level, and supposedly with EPA support, with decisions being made by individual governments along the plume as to what, if anything, to do about it.

    …There’s a bunch of other factors too, but this is already TL:DNR, so I’ll leave you with this;

    …You’re the Chief. You show up to a pile of burning tankers. You have a small department and a large problem. The EPA and CHEMTREC say plume the tanks. The Governor is on his way, and the whole world is watching. Your men and people in the town and YOURSELF may literally DIE as a result of your next command.

    What do YOU do, Chief?

    I refer you to the quote I made at the beginning of the first post.

    ………………………………………

    And as for the reporter…

    …I do not know the specifics, and DeWhine the RINO has no love of mine, but he DID seem to be an out-of-order asshole and I have NEVER seen a reporter get it right about reporting on a large fire, or even really TRY. You’ll see stupid stuff like “The firefighters had their oxygen tanks on” with complete ignorance about how utterly leathal wearing PURE OXYGEN into a fire would be. They sensationalize and make stuff up just to try to be interesting and seem well-informed. Back in the B&W TV days even they would do things like pour water under a car crash because it would look like blood on those types of TVs (look it up), and it DEFINITELY hasn’t got better since then. For MY money, any time you can slam a reporter to the ground and drag him to prison, you SHOULD, because he’s DEFINITELY not there to HELP.

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