On a cool April morning in 1947, the S.S. Grandcamp sat docked in Texas City, waiting as it was loaded with sacks of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.  A few years earlier, this humble cargo ship had been part of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet. After World War II, the U.S. government gave it to France as a gift to help rebuild a shattered Europe, where it was renamed the Grandcamp and converted into a slightly less grand cargo ship, which now found itself waiting fatefully in a Texas port.

The Grandcamp’s freight that day, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, is usually a relatively safe cargo, but it can quickly become unstable and explosive under certain conditions, which is also why it is used as an industrial and military explosive.  Arriving by train in Texas City, this cargo may have become too warm to ship safely, but at the time, few chemical safety regulations existed, and the fertilizer was packed onto the Grandcampalong with its previous shipments of twine, peanuts, tobacco, and 16 cases of small arms ammunition.

Photo taken April 18, 1947. (Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. UH Digital Library)

Around 8:00 a.m. on April 16, after about 2,300 tons of fertilizer were loaded, workers noticed smoke and vapors coming from the ship.  No one knew what caused the fire in the hold. The captain ordered the hatches battened and tarpaulins thrown over them, calling for steam to be piped into the ship—a firefighting technique he hoped would put out the fire but preserve the cargo. However, this would only make things worse.

Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the ship exploded with tremendous force. The resulting explosion launched the cargo 2,000 to 3,000 feet into the sky, caused a 15-foot tidal wave, and was felt as far as 250 miles away.

A nearby ship, the S.S. High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, ignited and about 16 hours later, also exploded.

The combined explosions resulted in the largest industrial disaster of its time in the U.S., taking the lives of an estimated 500–600 people.  Thousands more were injured.

Damaged Texas City houses one mile away from the explosion. Photo taken on April 18, 1947. (Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. UH Digital Library)

On a warm November evening in 2003, Barge NMS 1477 sat docked in Texas City, just across from the same dock where the Grandcamp had been waiting fatefully 56 years earlier. Loaded with 197,000 gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid (>97%), the barge capsized during the final stages of loading on November 3. With the barge now floating upside down at the dock, acid began slowly leaking from the vents as seawater rushed in, dangerously diluting the acid.

Charlie Henry, then NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator for the region, quickly reported to the scene to support the United States Coast Guard Captain of the Port. While the situation appeared stable, the threat of a possible disaster was slowly growing. Inside the bowels of the barge, an aggressive chemical reaction was taking place.

Barge NMS 1477 later tilted on its side, where it was coincidentally located at the same Texas City dock as the S.S. High Flyer. (NOAA

Highly concentrated acid is actually stable when shipping, but partially diluted concentrated sulfuric acid is highly corrosive. As the acid began mixing with small amounts of seawater, it began eating away at the barge’s steel structure, releasing heat and explosive hydrogen gas.

The gravity of this situation was not lost on Charlie and others involved in the response. This was quickly becoming a very dangerous situation for the responders and the local public.

With the gruesome 1947 catastrophe on their minds, the local NOAA responders along with a Louisiana State University chemist providing scientific support arrived at the site of the partially sunken barge on November 5, and the Seattle-based NOAA response team also went into high gear. The response team included the U.S. Coast Guard, the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, Texas Parks and Wildlife, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and NOAA, as well as representatives from the barge’s operator, Martin Product Sales LLC, all working together to minimize the impact of this incident.

The dock where the barge overturned in the Port of Texas City in 2004. (NOAA)

The barge had now tilted on its side and rested on the bottom at the dock. This was the same spot that the unfortunate S.S. High Flyer was docked in 1947. Everyone’s immediate concern was the potential for an explosion from the hydrogen gas now built up in the barge. The gas had expanded the barge’s side-plates and vigorously bubbled from vents located underwater near where the side of the barge rested on the bottom.

Since 1947, this area in Texas City had been extensively developed to support the chemical and oil industries, meaning that an explosion on the barge could lead to even more damage and disaster than before.

Because the threat of explosion was so great, the responders made the unusual but necessary decision to do a controlled spill of the vessel’s remaining sulfuric acid into the adjacent harbor waters. To dilute such large volumes of acid to a concentration considered below an environmental hazard, it would have to be mixed with huge volumes of water. The buffering salts in seawater would also help mitigate the acid. The operation was complete by November 13, nine days after the accident.

The decision to intentionally spill the cargo wasn’t easy, but later environmental sampling showed that the acid was highly buffered and diluted when it entered the adjacent open bay. Furthermore, tidal flow and the movement of ships in the area appeared to help reduce the environmental impacts as well. Monitoring continued as the “footprint” of the plume of the discharged acid dissipated throughout the waters.

Aerial photo of Texas City Port taken April 20, 1947. (Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. UH Digital Library)

Fortunately, a smart use of science helped avoid another explosion in Texas City. The scarred propeller from the S.S. High Flyer sits at the entrance to the Port at Texas City as a reminder of a less fortunate emergency response which now happened 65 years ago.

• 1947 Texas City Disaster | Moore Memorial Public Library
• The Texas City Disaster, 1947 By Hugh W. Stephens | University of Texas Press
• Sulfuric Acid Barge NMS 1477 Leaking | IncidentNews.gov
• Agencies Respond to Capsized Barge | MarineLink.com

CJ Beegle-Krause is president of Research4D, a Seattle-based nonprofit with a mission to bring peer-reviewed research into decision support. She is a former trajectory modeler with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, who worked on this barge incident. More recently, she has been working again with OR&R on the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

“Science allows us to predict, and thus to respond most appropriately to smaller rapidly-scaling-up events like this barge as well as larger scale environmental disasters.”

Ocean Ranger Semi-Submersible Drlling Rig

30 years ago today the Ocean Ranger, a semisubmersible drilling rig, sank during a vicious winter storm while drilling an exploration well off the coast of Newfoundland, killing all 84 crew members onboard.

Considered the world’s largest and most advanced oil rig of her time, the Ocean Ranger disaster left the industry puzzled and prompted hard look into how a disaster of this proportion could happen.  The investigations that followed revealed a load of problems from mechanical and design problems to poor training and inadequate lifesaving equipment.

Here is part 1 of a 6 part series that looks into the anatomy of the disaster that changed Canada’s offshore oil and gas industry forever.  Watch Part II.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“When disaster strikes, our job is to mobilize massive assistance and to make sure it reaches those in need - fast! . Private sector expertise and corporate partnerships are critical to helping us save lives.”

- Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, World Food Programme

The establishment of reliable supply chains, and the ability to stand up Logistics Emergency Teams in disaster-prone areas is a critical element to the mitigation of further catastrophe.

Image courtesy World Economic Forum

Facilitated by the World Economic Forum, Logistics Emergency Teams (LET) are currently being provided pro bono by Agility, AP Möller-Maersk, TNT and UPS… four leading logistics companies, as well as the United Nations.   These organizations joined forces to  provide surge capacity during interventions in disaster-stricken areas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LETs’ support through pre-agreed operating procedures and training includes:

• Logistics specialists (e.g. airport coordinators, airport managers and warehouse managers)
• Logistics assets (e.g. warehouses, trucks, forklifts)
• Logistics services (e.g. airlift, trucking, customs management)

In 2008-2010, LETs deployed in Mozambique, Myanmar, Haiti, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan & Chile. Around 100 trained volunteers are currently on standby.

“As we move forward, we’re all looking to prevent supply chain disruptions from happening in the first place.  Making sure that critical components are in place in vulnerable regions.  This is how we see the partnership moving forward over the next few years.” – Sean Doherty, Head of Logistics and Transport Industry, World Economic Forum

More can be found regarding the Logistics Emergency Teams by clicking here.

This week marks the 23th anniversary of the worst offshore oil disaster in history.

The Piper Alpha was a North Sea oil production platform operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. It accounted for around ten per cent of the oil and gas production from the North Sea at the time. The platform began production in 1976 first as an oil platform and then later converted to gas production. An explosion and resulting fire destroyed it on July 6, 1988, killing 167 men. Total insured loss was $ 3.4 billion. While the environmental damage was not as severe as the loss of the Deepwater Horizon, it remains world’s worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost.

The Amazing site Oil Rig Disasters writes about the Piper Alpha. they tell us:

On 06 July 1988, work began on one of two condensate-injection pumps, designated A and B, which were used to compress gas on the platform prior to transport of the gas to Flotta. A pressure safety valve was removed from compressor A for recalibration and re-certification and two blind flanges were fitted onto the open pipework. The dayshift crew then finished for the day.

During the evening of 06 July, pump B tripped and the nightshift crew decided that pump A should be brought back into service. Once the pump was operational, gas condensate leaked from the two blind flanges and, at around 2200 hours, the gas ignited and exploded, causing fires and damage to other areas with the further release of gas and oil. Some twenty minutes later, the Tartan gas riser failed and a second major explosion occurred followed by widespread fire. Fifty minutes later, at around 2250 hours, the MCP-01 gas riser failed resulting in a third major explosion. Further explosions then ensued, followed by the eventual structural collapse of a significant proportion of the installation.

.

Piper Alpha Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

.

.

Piper Alpha Photos

The Piper Alpha, as seen from a crew change helicopter, before the fire started.

All that remains of the oil platform after the devastating fire burns out.

The fire in full blaze. Imagine the heat that was generated.

A simulation of the survivability of the Piper Alpha’s Lifeboats.

The Blaze lit the night sky for miles in every direction.

Video Links:

• Piper Alpha Tribute Video
  
• Video animation of Piper Alpha Explosion
• “My Duke of Edinburgh” Movie Trailer

Links:

• 10 Deadliest Offshore Accidents
• BBC Report on this incident.
• Memories of the men who died
• UK Study on preventing large shipboard explosions
• Fire and Blast Information Group: Piper Alpha

Modern Day Oil Rig Tragedy – Gulf Of Mexico

For a look at a discussion on the cause and effect of the Deepwater Horizon – Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig Tragedy and the blog post “Deepwater Horizon Explosion – Breaking News From The Gulf Of Mexico” for a real time look at the events behind a modern oil rig explosion & fire.

Wait, the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout wasn’t previously the worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

That’s right.  As mentioned in gCaptain.com’s list of History’s 10 Most Famous Oil Spills the previous record holder for worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was IXTOC I, a 2 mile deep exploritory well that blew out on June 3, 1979 in the Bahia de Campeche, 600 miles south of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.  On that day, a loss of drilling mud and circulation caused a blowout on the SEDCO 135 semi-submersible platform (Sedco has since been acquired by Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon) which was on lease to Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).  The IXTOC I well continued to gush oil at a rate of 10,000 – 30,000 barrels per day (or 140 million gallons total) until it was finally capped on March 23, 1980.

Today, the oil spill caused by the April 20th blowout of the Deepwater Horizon eclipsed the IXTOC I as the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico’s history, with an estimated 140.6 million gallons spilled.  According to AP, this calculation is based on the higher end of the government’s range of barrels leaked per day, minus the amount BP says it has collected from the blown-out well using two containment systems.

Today, June 15th 2010, marks the 104th aniversary of the General Slocum disaster, a twin-paddlewheel steamboat that caught fire and sank shortly after leaving Manhattan for a daytrip up the Long Island Sound. Of the estimated of the 1,342 people on board the vessel, 1,021 were killed, making the event the worst disaster in terms of loss of life for the New York metro area, a title it held for nearly 100 years.

In remberance of the event, here is a look at the book “Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum” by Edward T. O’Donnell provided by Failure Magazine:

When the twin-paddlewheel steamboat General Slocum departed Manhattan for Long Island Sound on the morning of Wednesday June 15, 1904, the 1,300-plus passengers on board expected nothing more than a relaxing day trip. The itinerary called for a short ride up the East River to Long Island’s Locust Grove, where the travelers would eat, drink and play to their heart’s content before being ferried back home. It’s safe to say that swimming was not one of the planned activities, as the mini-cruise called for participants to wear their Sunday best, and few early 20th century New Yorkers knew how to swim, anyway. But just minutes into the excursion a fire started below deck, and before long flames engulfed the boat, forcing the passengers into the water.

In the new book, “Ship Ablaze” (Broadway), historian Edward O’Donnell recounts the General Slocum story, a tragedy that took the lives of 1,021 people—mostly women and children. Initially, the fire and subsequent horrors were viewed as a simple, albeit catastrophic, accident. But when survivors reported the alarming disrepair of the boat’s safety equipment, it became evident that corporate greed, corruption and negligence were to blame for the casualties. Within a week, grand jury hearings were underway to determine culpability, but the victims’ families would get no satisfaction. The decisions and actions that led to the second-deadliest incident in New York’s history went almost entirely unpunished.

Read More at FailureMag.com

Above image via FailureMag courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.

by Paul Drouin

The Cosco Busan accident, as with many others that have the same root cause, can be categorized into what I call the pilotage paradox. For on the one hand, we wish to confide the safety and con of the vessel to the pilot, yet on the other insist it is the crew and captain that are ultimately responsible and accountable for the safe conduct of the vessel.

In the seven minute interval between leaving the inner harbour and striking the bridge pylon, the pilot gave 13 helm orders without the slightest indication on the bridge of the Cosco Busan that anything was amiss. We know this because the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has left an amazing amount of information on their public docket website, including transcripts of the bridge voice recordings.

Leaving berth 56 (Port of Oakland) and passing under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is a relatively simple matter, even under blind pilotage conditions, as only two course changes bring you through the span. The Delta-Echo span of the bridge is wide, with a horizontal clearance of 673 meters, and is equipped with a RACON dead center of the span. For the Cosco Busan, winds were light and the vessel would be stemming the flood current as it passed under the bridge. This maneuver should not give an experienced 3rd Mate cause to sweat, much less an experienced pilot.

Under keel clearance was not great for the Cosco Busan, however, and as a consequence hydrodynamic forces on the hull caused by the flood tide would have been strong as the vessel’s sidebody came to obstruct the flow, which was setting at approximately 130° (T) near the bridge and anywhere up to 168° (T) further from the bridge.

While it has subsequently come to light that a passage plan for the pilot assisted portion of the voyage did not exist, the outcome would have probably been the same had there been one. Why? By many accounts, pilotage is still a “one-man-show” in most parts of the world. The intended route is almost inevitably “in the pilot’s head” and a “team approach” is in theory only. Under this paradigm, if the pilot, for any reason, loses situational awareness or makes the wrong decision, the team cannot correct, object or challenge. I have found, in my ten years as an accident investigator, that while crews and pilots are generally well informed of BRM techniques, they do not apply them when a pilot has the con.

I am aware of only one pilotage jurisdiction that has radically changed the way they do business. For ships arriving off Brisbane, bridge teams, and in particular the OOW, can expect to be treated differently by the pilot – they can expect to be treated as an effective member of the navigation team. Brisbane pilots have, for some years, introduced the following procedures;

• On boarding, the pilot asks to see the ship’s passage plan and the pilot takes the bridge team through his own passage plan during which time any variances in the two plans are discussed and resolved.

• The pilot will not take over the con of the vessel until the courses on the ships charts and the pilot’s passage plan are the same. Any variances are amended on the ship’s charts (paper), ENC, and radar.

• The OOW is asked to confirm with the pilot each alter course position as they approach to within 7 cables of the position as well as the mark used to alter course and the next course.

• The bridge team is encouraged to use the pilot’s Portable Pilot Unit (PPU) for comparison purposes – but not as a prime means of monitoring the ships position. The PPU is used as an aid to navigation, independent of the ship’s equipment.

This last point is reassuring as we now see a proliferation of pilotage authorities adopting the use of PPUs by their pilots. While this is not in and of itself a bad thing, if the bridge team is excluded from this equipment we would only be entrenching and validating the “one-man-show” paradigm.

Brisbane pilots must be congratulated for breaking the mold and showing the way forward to a better way of pilotage. Yet, their innovation was not without some resistance. When first developed, a number of their pilots were convinced they could never get foreign crews to competently participate in such an exercise. These preconceptions have proven quite wrong! Today, some six years along, Brisbane pilots have been pleasantly surprised by the competency and cooperation of ship’s crews. And the corresponding response from crews has been one of enthusiasm and a sense of genuine participation in the pilotage operation.

Some jurisdictions, such as those with short pilotage runs (but not exclusively so), may try and rationalize away these procedures as not practicable for their area. But in today’s world of electronic charts, DGPS, centralized vessel traffic control, and easy electronic communication, these are only feeble excuses – a death clutch to the old way of doing things. For a majority of pilotage areas today, there is no reason why standardized pilotage passage plans cannot be transmitted to the vessel beforehand so as to be noted on the charts, electronic or otherwise. When the pilot boards the vessel, any last-minute corrections or changes can be agreed upon, thus proceeding without delay – and everyone is singing from the same song sheet!

In a published report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) one can review circumstances similar to that of the Cosco Busan. While downbound in the river at night and while under pilotage, the container vessel Horizon was allowed to continue past the pilot’s customary course alteration point (see “A” in diagram) by approximately three cables, or, in other words by 50 seconds at a speed of 15 knots.

Vessel Horizon positions before and after grounding (from TSB report M04L0092)

No correction or challenge by the OOW was forthcoming as the vessel passed the pilot’s customary course alteration point and plowed into the mud bank on the south side of the River.

Suffice it to say that bridge ergonomics, BRM, as well as pilotage practices and procedures have a ways to go before the precise navigation of a large vessel by a pilot and crew of two or more can be accomplished in a seamless, complementary and consistent manner. With the proper planning, intended courses can be adhered to and mistakes, if made, corrected in time to avoid nasty consequences.

Additionally, maybe vessel bridges will have to change –possibly reduced in size and with a more ergonomic and compact layout to bring the team together. Better all-round visibility would be a great advantage as well. Since BRM was inspired by the air industry’s “cockpit resource management”, maybe so too should the designers of ship’s bridges be inspired by the airplane cockpit.

TSB report M04L0092 – Grounding of the Container Vessel Horizon, 2004.

——–

This post submitted by Paul Drouin is a condensed version of an article written for the September 2008 edition of Seaways Magazine and can be found HERE.

Captain Paul Drouin has over a decade of marine accident investigation
experience. He is a graduate of the Canadian Coast Guard College (class
of 81) and a licensed Master Mariner (Unlimited). After serving for 15
years on all manner of Coast Guard vessels (five as master), Paul moved
to a shore job as Marine Superintendant before beginning his
investigator duties in 1998. He is also founder of SafeShip, a company
dedicated to safer ships and safer crews. He lives in Lac-Beauport,
Quebec with his wife and daughter.

Paul’s website: www.safeship.ca
———

If we only had one technology related wish for 2008 it would be that every mariner watched this video. Reminder: This is important people!

FROM WIRED:

While micro-messaging service Twitter may be one of the best tools for citizen reporting in emergencies such as the Southern California wildfires, the service’s real usefulness is its ability to get messages to users’ friends and family and provide evacuation updates — even when cell networks are overloaded, according to homeland security consultant W. David Stephenson.

As important as the updates you wrote about, they’re nowhere near as important as using Twitter to let your family know you’re ok (instead of cell calls, which every time they’re used in disasters end up crashing the network — and don’t get through, either): because they’re packet based, they’re cued up until they can route around obstacles or gaps in the network, and the 140-character limit means they take up a tiny amount of bandwidth, leaving it for those who need it most.

Even cooler, Stephenson tells THREAT LEVEL, are the Red Cross’s Twitter channels.

* The redcross channel lets them push information during a mass evacuation. Since cellphone customers can sign up for Twitter ‘on the fly,’ they will encourage evacuees to text ‘FOLLOW REDCROSS’ to 40404, and sign up for updates. The messages will include information about where the shelters are, distribution sites, and other contact info.

* The safeandwell channel is used more for inbound communication. Those who text ‘FOLLOW SAFEANDWELL’ to 40404 will automatically be followed back. That means they can send their private information as a Direct Message to the American Red Cross. (’D SAFEANDWELL Larry Melman, 205-xxx-xxxx, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Bay Minette, is safe in a shelter.’) That maintains the privacy of the individual, and also serves to funnel the information to a centralized database.

Stephenson shows how to use Twitter in emergencies in this episode of his video series 21st Century Disaster Tips You Won’t Hear From Officials:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to Jesse Robbins for the find.

gCaptain’s Twitter Page

Wired has an interesting article on portable emergency housing. Some of the ideas make use of shipping containers. The tell us;

One of the biggest obstacles to emergency-shelter design is finding the right balance between providing a temporary shelter like a tent and working to rebuild permanent homes.

“You can’t design for disaster after the fact,” notes Kate Stohr, co-founder of the nonprofit humanitarian design firm Architecture for Humanity. “Unless it’s strategically thought about in advance of disaster, these ideas don’t work.”Shipping containers, found in abundance all over the world, form the basis for the Future Shack, a self-contained, modular refugee-housing unit. It can be mass-produced with a minimum of materials and is easily stockpiled, making it a versatile emergency-housing unit.

You can find the slideshow and attached article HERE.