November 2, 2013

HPCL Fire investigation

 According to a Times of India report, the Oil Industry safety directorate has faulted HPCL management for the August 23rd inferno in the cooling tower which claimed 28 lives.The article mentions the following:
"Revealing the lack of precautions taken by HPCL-Visakha Refinery, OISD said that internal pre-commissioning safety audit was done by a multi-disciplinary team of HPCL but the "recommendations/ pending jobs were not completed".
The lapses list
** Management failed to stop commissioning even though several processes remained unfinished
** Nearly 100 personnel were allowed to be present and work at the site during commissioning
** No senior official was available at the site and commissioning activity was left to one supervisor only
** Hazard identification not done and no risk analysis carried out
** Hot job carried out under the supervision of the maintenance department
** Contract workers not told to leave the site before the commissioning of the facilit
  Read the article in this link.

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