What is a Chemical Facility?

I ran into an interesting article over on MountainStateSpotlight.org about a recent warehouse fire in Parkersburg, WV, that mimicked a fire in 2017 in the same city. Beyond the fires being on the same street, they were similar in that first responders were hampered by lack of knowledge about hazardous materials that may have been stored in the facilities. 

The article notes that:  

“Currently, chemical plants like those found in Wood and Kanawha counties have to keep that type of information [safety data sheets] on file, so firefighters can know what type of fire suppression tactics to use.” 

Unfortunately, warehouses and distribution centers appear to be exempt from those state fire safety regulations. 

This highlights an ongoing issue for chemical safety and security folks; what is a chemical facility? For most people, a chemical facility is a large facility with multiple very-large storage tanks and miles of piping. A warehouse, even one filled with drums and totebins full of chemicals, do not readily come to mind as chemical facilities for most people, apparently including such people as legislators. 

For chemical security people, an approach like that taken with the now dead Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program certainly seems to be appropriate. They prepared a relatively short (a little over 300) list of chemicals that could be used as weapons for a terrorist attack. Anyone that had a significant amount of any one of those chemicals on site would be considered to be a chemical facility of interest worthy of a government threat assessment and potential regulation. 

For chemical safety personnel and first responders, that is a much too limited approach. Chemicals that would be of no use to a terrorist organization, could still act as a bomb in a warehouse fire. A sealed drum of water will explode if nearby flames heat it to 100° C. The resulting steam cloud will burn nearby personnel. A drum of vinegar (mostly water with 4 to 8 percent acetic acid) will explode at about the same temperature, but the acetic acid gas cloud will be flammable and could explode in turn. A fiber drum of vegetable oil will fail well before it reaches its boiling point, and the liquid spill will float on top of water and could still ignite, spreading the fire with the flowing water. And the potential problems get even more complex and dangerous if you start to look at industrial chemicals. 

Fire fighters and other first responders need to know what chemicals are in a building before they enter it. All chemicals are dangerous in a burning warehouse. In that respect, every storage facility should be considered a chemical facility.