Industry's safety record is just not good enough
23 Apr 2013
London – Harrison firefighters battle blaze at plant … Dexter wastewater treatment plant explosion kills one … Nuclear plant fire: ‘No threat to public’ as smoke billows from Hartlepool Power Station … Fire at Simpson Plant Downtown Shelton …
These are just some of the serious incidents to have occurred in the US within three days of last week’s deadly explosion that tore through a fertiliser plant in Texas, killing at least 14 and injuring more than 100 people.
These dreadful headlines – as tracked by the ASM (Abnormal Situation Management) consortium – show that for all the investigation work around incidents such as Buncefield, BP Texas City and Macondo, we are still not getting to the root causes of accidents in this sector.
If those in charge are really serious about improving process safety, they must step back from the current culture of accident investigation – with all all the finger-pointing and self-justification that goes with it – and come up with an entirely new approach.
A good starting point would be to look at human error/oversight at all points of the equation, from site operators and senior managers to everyone involved in shaping, writing and enforcing safety rules and regulations.
