Insights from 595 tank farm fires from around the world

Abstract

This article presents several insights from research of fire incident data from tank farms from around the world, which store products ranging from low flashpoint materials to crude and heavier hydrocarbons. The incidents and information in the database came from over 130 mostly publicly available sources, including technical and news reports. Updating of the database takes place when new studies require analysis of previous incidents. The database contained 595 fire incidents at the time of preparation of this article, and this research has already supported the analysis of the reliability of fire water protection system, hazard identification, and risk assessment for several tank farms.The research provided valuable insights regarding the frequency of tank farm fires, the frequency of boilovers, the frequency of injuries/fatalities, the expected numbers of injuries/fatalities per incident, the frequency of dike fires, the probability of failure of the fire water system, the time to extinguish (TtEx) the fires, the ignition source, and the types of tank roofs. When the database provided sufficient information, these numbers appear as a function of the material or product. The data also allowed plotting TtEx as a function of the (a) time for over a century, (b) tank diameter, and (c) number of tanks on fire.