Coode Island Fire Case Study

Introduction
A fire broke out in a suburban chemical storage facility where it leads to a catastrophic incident in Coode Island. The incident happened on August 21, 1991 little after 2 pm, when an explosion happened on Coode Island facility. A chemical storage tank that was holding around 600,000 liters of a hazardous chemical called acrylonitrile caught on fire and exploded with sufficient force. The fire that was burning had extreme toxic smoke that went into the air and traveled over the western suburbs and the city and as far as Frankston.
The types of hazards included methyl ethyl ketone, acrylonitrile, and benzene these formed a toxic black smoke cloud that traveled 18 miles from the accident site. The emergency response teams had the roads closed and had evacuated the nearby Schools, buildings and

The burning went on for hours more firefighting foam was used till firefighters gained control which ended up around 4 pm. Afterwards management stood up and took control and implemented changes in safety on the site where the fires happened, also other sites that store dangerous goods on all Coode Island Facilities.
Overall the Coode Island fire was among one of the series of incidents were it helped change the hazard facility safety outlook in many ways. There are so many lessons to be learned and I think lessons were learned and taken very serious.
Expected Cause
The expected cause of the explosion was said to be vapor space of acrylonitrile tank 80 following a strike from “St Elmo’s fire” which entered through the pressure relief valve that is located at the top of the tanks. At the time of the explosion they had Acrylonitrile being pumped into tank 80. Eye witnesses said it was bad weather that caused lightning rather than malpractice; but there was no one that actually saw the tanks being hit by