A closed gate and a fire suppression system that wasn’t activated may have hampered efforts to extinguish Tuesday’s massive fire at the NuStar Energy tank farm in Crockett, according to Contra Costa County officials.
“I was told by the fire chief that as employees left, the (fire suppression) system was not activated,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia.
“The full details will come out at the conclusion of the investigation, but the preliminary reports are that there is some concern that the fire suppression system was not activated there was a slight delay in getting in,” Gioia said.
The fire broke out at the facility just before 2 p.m. and burned two massive tanks holding ethanol. The blaze burned for hours, resulted in the closure of Interstate Highway 80 and shelter-in-place and evacuation orders for the surrounding communities.
No injuries were reported.
Steve Hill, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, confirmed that when fire crews arrived on the scene, they found the gate closed.
“There was some initial delay getting to the site, Hill said. “The gates were closed. Whether they were locked or not, I don’t know.”
“That in and of itself isn’t particularly unusual,” Hill said. “I don’t think that it hand any kind of impact on the outcome of fighting the fire.”
Hill also confirmed that the fire suppression system wasn’t operating when the first crews arrived.
“I know that our first engine reported that the fire suppression system was not active,” Hill said. “I don’t know if that’s because it wasn’t activated or if it failed.”
NuStar did not respond to questions about the closed gate or fire suppression system.
7 comments
Could be someone’s insurance company is very unhappy.
Look forward to hearing what incident investigation report has to say.
curiouser and curiouser
slowly I turn. INCH BY INCH.
It’s my understanding that the fire suppression system was available but it was never activated.
Apparently there were five employees at the site and none of them activated the fire suppression system as they did not know where the fire was within the tank farm.
They have video cameras and other instrumentation on all the tanks but either there was nobody in the control room or whoever was there did not know how to understand/interpret the data.
Thus when the fire department arrived the employees did not know what was burning, what was in the adjacent tanks, and how full the various tanks were which slowed down the fire department response.
The gate closure was another mini-SNAFU. The employees left the facility to go to a muster point across the street. As part of they closed the gate to secure the facility. Apparently their protocol did not include leaving someone at the gate to let arriving first responders into the facility.
Heads are going to roll for this fire and because the employees were not trained in fire response protocol.
My brother works at a refinery and is trained in fire fighting as well as his manager job. They send him to Texas a couple times a year to train.
Also refinery 101, someone always has to be at the controls, ALWAYS. It has to be a veteran trained on the board. whomever was there did not pass their board test .
Also , It does not matter where the explosion or fire is at on the refinery grounds.
If there is a fire anywhere on the property the whole refinery shuts down . No matter what , so it does not matter if they didn’t know where it was you push the gosh darn button. IT SAVES LIVES.
Think of it as a gas station. If 1 pump catches fire you don’t keep pumping at the other pumps. You hit the shut off button which instantly seals off the pumps in order to contain the fire to one spot.
I hope part of the investigation includes the content of the tanks that burnt. They are lying through their teeth when they say it was ethanol and the media keeps repeating this lie. Ethanol burns blue to clear. This smoke in all the photos was opaque and black meaning it was a much more carbon dense fuel than ethanol. We have a right to know what poison we’re breathing.
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