Yesterday, the Chemical Safety Board announced the publication of an update for their investigation of the July 31st, 2024, anhydrous ammonia release at Cuisine Solutions in Sterling, VA. The update provides a description of the incident timeline and discusses some of the issues related to the relationship between the locations of the leak and the posted evacuation routes. The update concludes with an outline of the issues that the investigators are still looking at, including:
• Potential causes
of the ammonia emergency pressure relief valve opening,
• The total quantity
of ammonia released,
• Cuisine Solutions’
emergency action plan for an ammonia release,
• Cuisine Solutions’
process safety management and risk management programs and policies, and
• Codes and standards for ammonia refrigeration systems.
Cuisine Solutions is one of seven ongoing investigations being conducted by the CSB. While the oldest of those incidents only occurred in January, 2023, it looks like the CSB is recreating the investigation backlog of 2016 thru 2023. I explained the scope of that backlog this way in July of 2022:
“Currently, the CSB has a long backlog of uncompleted investigations. There are 18 current investigations, dating back to 2016 and the CSB has not initiated a new investigation since July 27th of last year.”
The problem is that
it takes time and personnel to complete the types of investigations that are
being conducted by the CSB. There is going to be a practical limit to the
number of investigations that the relatively small Board can undertake. Sending
investigators to new incidents will limit their work on existing
investigations, delaying the publication of reports. At some point, you dig a
hole that grabs congressional attention.
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