Preliminary 2D Animation of Events Leading to 2017 Fire at Arkema Chemical Plant in Crosby, Texas

[@HughesEnterprises]

For once on this channel the chemical manufacturer did everything right they possibly could have.

[@carbonzo6]

Ben Esker what can you say the public is stupid

[@kisaragi_san1378]

generally if you do something right the CSB doesnt care, only if you have a major screwup or something big happens

[@phillip_mcguinness7025]

@Ben Esker Indicted does not mean convicted. It's going to be a loooong uphill battle to prove that the actions taken were reckless. It can even fall back on the city, state, county for NOT having regulation in place for generators on stilts or pole mounted transformers. It'll be a long senseless battle when it should be a careful inspection and determining new best practices and regulation moving forward.

[@d0lph1n63]

They did do everything they possibly could have done as no one had predicted Hurricane Harvey would unleash all that rain and it sounds like the crew on site did everything they could in their power to keep the chemical stock cool as well as themselves safe. Cudos to the crew and the company as well cause the crew sprung into action to relocate the contents of the warehouses when it became clear the entire site was beginning to flood and the backup generator was doomed to be swamped also. Second to the factory owners who not only had said crew rescued but alerted the authorities to the dangers the compound posed to the surrounding community and gave a rough timeframe of when combustion would happen. This was in a sense the best kind of disaster scenario a chemical manufacturing company can ask for as no lives were lost and the threat was safely dealt with. Plus this was caused by something that was beyond even their ability to control.

[@jimcrelm9478]

Lots of paid "reputation management" in the comments smh

[@notmuch_23]

Holy shit! There are people who showed and acted with actual competency and intelligence during a horrible situation beyond their control? I never thought I'd see an example of that on the USCSB channel!

[@compactcow]

I was waiting for the part where one of the containers blew up when they were carrying them by hand or something 😂 but nope everything was fine, very odd for a CSB video.

[@gfox5237]

Wow. Out of all the tragedy that's on this channel. It is truly refreshing to see an incident handled in the best way possible by all levels. Brave workers moving dangerous chemicals by hand. Competent management knowing when to call authorities and evacuate their facility. And finally controled burns conducted by the fire department. To insure safe disposal. It shows you that safety is about communication and cooperation. And that at the end of the day. Safety should be everyone's concern.

[@UltraGamma25]

👏

[@GrantJohnston-dr9rt]

Well put .Sir.

[@MakeItWithCalvin]

Given the circumstances I think they did what could be done to try and mitigate the dangers and when all else failed they notified responders of the situation and went from there. Hats off to the workers for braving the storm & chemicals to try and keep the disaster as minimal as possible.

[@mikhailangel3258]

Calvin Witt no doubt it could be worse..

[@CapalOnLive]

totaly agre whis that. i can't count how many time the word 'fail' is use in the video

[@ph11p3540]

They did everything right and took heroic measures. This is one of those ultra rare cases of a disaster that was completely unavoidable. One way or another mother nature made the final decision and there was nothing else these guys can do.

[@ScottBrandt]

Did everything that could be done? Trailers have wheels. Take them somewhere else that isn’t going to flood and keep the refer units fueled.

[@donaldasayers]

Classic bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. How often are there hurricanes and flooding in that part of the world? The site should have been designed for flood resistance from the off.

[@labtec901]

Hard to fault the people at Arkema for what happened there. They had extensive contingency planning and fought as long as they were able to keep their product safe, and when it became apparent that a fire was inevitable, they warned the authorities and kept their workers and the surrounding community safe.

[@BenjaminEsposti]

Yup, plus, where the hell else would they move the chemicals?! They'd need some sort of refrigerated warehouse or a stock of fuel to keep the refrigerated trailers running.

[@MazeFrame]

Building Generators on stilts might be an option. Not sure how the risks for a similar storm repeating every year are, but it may be worth exploring the feasability.

[@mousecat4440]

Or simply building earthen embankments around the transformers and generators would be simple, cheap, and easy

[@keiyakins]

There are long-term planning options that could have helped, like building the refrigerated storage and its power stuff on a hill... but yeah, the actions in the leadup to and during the hurricane seem pretty reasonable.

[@jmowreader9555]

That's what truck stops are for, Benjamin. Driving west on I-10 to Van Horn (where there are two big truck stops), parking the trailers along a frontage road the DPS would close off, and using a jerry can to keep the trailers fueled until it was safe to return to Crosby would have been about the only thing they could have done.

[@icannotfly]

mad respect for the people that stayed behind to make sure everyone else was safe

[@holodoctor1]

These animations are great. Is it weird that I'd play "USCSB Safety Simulator" if it was a real game?

[@Xidewinde]

It's not the same genre, but there's a game called INFRA where you're a structural analyst/safety inspector and you navigate a bunch of unsafe facilities with a camera and a flashlight, taking pictures of unsafe conditions and solving environmental puzzles. It looks and feels a lot like Half-Life 2 with more focus on exploration and puzzles instead of combat.

[@lackedpuppet9022]

I second the INFRA comment. Highly recommend it.

[@criticalmess34]

Yes. But that’s fine. I do too.

[@xx-cj6ew]

"Vapor Release? Probably fine, open all the valves and fire all the safety supervisors! We need more profit!" GAME OVER

[@Bankable2790]

OOPS you forgot to close a valve.

[@lv7603]

It's nice to see a company that tried it's best under the circumstances.

[@trespire]

Well done Arkema Chemical Plant, well planned for all contingencies, well executed, minimum damage to life & property. They deserve a commendation for setting a bench mark for how risk should be managed.

[@charansingrajput5248]

Proactive planning always helpful

[@carbonzo6]

Ben Esker you keep saying that but no one gives a shit

[@DaylightRobberyCA]

I would have been curious to see the risk register document before all of this happened

[@afa6361]

They did an outstanding job mitigating the risks, notifying the public and burning the organic material in a controlled manner. Great video as always.

[@TheAgamemnon911]

Well, everything went better than expected. Seems, I have to increase my expectations.

[@TheDrew2022]

Well executed, well organized planning with contingencies, including controlled destruction of product to ensure the safety of the surrounding area. You can't ask for better.

[@Quadflash]

Strong work on Arkema's part! Seems like they were prepared and effective. But, sometimes Nature deals out more than anyone can handle.

[@jakebrodskype]

It was really difficult to predict how much rain was going to fall from this hurricane. Most had no idea they'd see 40 inches is so short a period of time. Like most people in the region, I suspect that if Arkema had known several days ahead what was going to happen, they'd probably have done things differently. The worst initial forecasts were for about 20-30 inches of rain. Their efforts seem to have reflected that expectation. But once they got more rain than that, they ran out of alternatives. Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, it seems obvious they should have hauled this stuff out of those warehouses. But that has hazards too, especially on roads that would already have been stressed with extreme loads of traffic. I'm looking forward to seeing what the CSB suggests could have been done differently.

[@keiyakins]

I suspect most of it is going to be construction-based: Build on a hill, or in places away from hurricanes in the first place.

[@MachinistRT]

It was 40-64" for the entire greater Houston area. League city got 22-24" Saturday night alone, they had reports of 9"an/hr rainfall rates.

[@Sir_Uncle_Ned]

Considering how things usually pan out in these videos I am seriously impressed that a company actually planned for an emergency!

[@465maltbie]

Sounds like a reasonable set of events, thank you for sharing. I always feel people learn so much more from this kind of presentation than just a safety bulletin.

[@-allround-]

Finally a story that ends "relatively" well

[@CuthbertNibbles]

This is quite the change in pace from the usual "management told workers to do something negligent, turned off the alarm system begging them to stop, overrode 3 safety locks and detonated a city block mixing two known reactants in a pressure vessel". Good job Arkema.

[@MidasMakeItRain]

Wow. They did literally everything they could to prevent the fire. A rare event where the fault lies completely out of the company's hands.

[@endrankluvsda4loko172]

This is really helpful. The videos where people make mistakes is useful for safety training, but the instances where people did the right thing in is also extremely useful, maybe even more so. In education, we call that "modeling".

[@andrewwitham8493]

It is refreshing to finally see a company dealing with dangerous chems, was prepered and compotent enough to mitigate a unavoidable fire

[@xXWOND3RBR3ADXx]

Wow down to moving the volatile chemicals by hand these guys were dedicated to stopping this.

[@xXWOND3RBR3ADXx]

Use this as a positive example

[@TheWizardGamez]

Harvey was crazy, There's a ditch near my house to catch rainwater, and its huge, like 30 2 story houses at minimum huge. And it was filled with water. Also good job on Arkema guys for being safe

[@theduke7539]

Considering the storm, these workers and plant management did far more than could ever be expected of them to avoid a catastrophe. Despite the loss in product and vehicles, this was exemplary.

[@MrPhantomFury]

Hats off 2 all those dedicated workers who worked their ass off in teh middle of a hurricane to do their job.

[@dickfitswell3437]

Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane with winds of 130 mph in Rockport, Texas. Corpus was barely touched. Rockport is 31 miles North of Corpus.

[@lewiemcneely9143]

The people at Arkema did a SUPER job. Nobody was left in the dark. GOOD JOB Arkema AND Chemical Safety Board!

[@HCvertigo]

A good plan well executed saves lives.

[@rogerdotlee]

Yep. It sounds to me like the workers performed beyond all reasonable expectations, all things considered. Good on them.

[@MrUranium238]

a valiant effort , congrats workers

[@Vsor]

Is this out on PC yet? Seriously though, this is the first time in a long time I feel like my taxes are being used responsibly.

[@Disinterested1]

it is honestly nice to see a responsible operator ....well done as this doubtless saved lives!

[@killernat]

this seems like it was a very well handled situation the workers protected their facility and tried to save the product with what they had the trailers are a minor loss in comparison to the warehouses

[@artgoat]

Seems that backup generators really should be elevated well above the highest possible flood line.

[@tenissabbalas]

That Voice is mesmerizing.. We have to give credits to the Speaker.

[@richlikeg3722]

Great planning and control on their parts. Kudos to the employees who stayed till the end

[@stephenconnell]

Top effort by management ,workers and first responders under extraordinary duress.

[@user-ro9zf9kz1h]

At least they have tried their best, i shall give respect to their action.

[@markgohl2660]

Well they tried to the absolute limit to fix the problem with what they had. Good attempt under extremely difficult conditions to avoid disaster. At least they managed to limit the damage to the trailers and no one got killed. Well Done :)

[@inezg1867]

This is the best moves that chemical manufacturer has made

[@Jack-vo7yf]

This is an example of how well things can go by simply following safety protocol and notifying emergency services before the disaster. Even in a catastrophe such as a powerful Hurricane in usually dry lands.

[@ismokkekkush420]

You should do a video about the oil refinery explosion at Clark Oil in Blue Island, Illinois from 1995. This was very close to my house and for some reason did not receive alot of attention when it happened.

[@sbreheny]

It does seem that Arkema did well here. The only thing I think they could foreseeably do better would be to have some way of destroying their chemical stock in a controlled way in emergencies. I don't know how difficult or expensive that might be but it would be worth looking in to.

[@VictorJeraldo]

If I remember correctly it would have been in the 6-7 digit range, so significant but not huge. Specifically it would have been for the materials that could have decomposed and combusted, and would have been a chemical system that would have rendered the organic materials non-flammable, but also useless for any industrial processes. A storm like Harvey is rare enough they decided against it, since the estimates at the time that it would only be once every hundred years.

[@j-man6001]

Great voice for a great documentary. What a terrible scenario for those brave workers staying behind, thank goodness no one was killed

[@movax20h]

Well, this was handled extremally well. It is hard to say it is even possible to handle it better. Maybe finding a spot which is higher level, or spreading trailers more around, or getting more help (i.e. additional refrigation units or tractors) could help. Or putting emergency generators at higher elevation above the ground. Facility looks to be reasonably well designed otherwise, and it is extremally hard to make it better, as some events are simply too rare to account for. They did as much as they can.

[@bobjenkins9208]

so refreshing to see a company actually going out of its way and implementing strategies on the fly, i see no error here, just an act of God.

[@wasimjaan3300]

Hats off for the workers, who did best possible..

[@andrewyork3869]

They handled this incredibly well, wasn't much more that could be done.

[@nuclearthreat545]

do more animations these are awesome

[@nairda55555]

Kudos to the people at Arkema for a job well done.

[@sarahl532]

Now /this/ is an example of what companies /should/ do!

[@1978garfield]

First off hats off to the workers that did what they could. Next all facility designers need to watch the NOVA special about what happened to the nuclear power plant in Japan during the tsunami. After you watch that I think you will agree GENERATORS DON'T BELONG IN BASEMENTS OR AT GROUND LEVEL! In both of these cases if the generators and wiring had been higher power would have stayed on. I know it is an extra expense and generators are heavy. However power goes out during storms and storms bring water.

[@likeabunnie]

1978garfield that's actually a really great point - people suggested having everything up on stilts, but that cost would be significant and comes with increased risks, too!Seems fairly obvious (now that you pointed it out, haha), but that really is an excellent point! With Fukushima, it seemed like "duh... Why would you put the generators in the basement?!?", and I'm sure the reason was that they felt confident the facility was built so that they could assume water would never breach the barriers protecting everything... But nature tends to not care so much about what we assume or plan for! Having the generators raised and given greater protection from potential flooding would be a total game changer in these situations, and many others, and I'm sure there are some potential drawbacks from having them higher up (I admit I am not sure of the size that a generator of high enough voltage to fulfill the tasks required in this instance, or even for a nuclear power plant, which I... Honestly don't know how much power a generator in that instance would require, it might not need to be as powerful as the ones to keep warehouses cool... Idk... But I'm sure the size is a factor), my first thought being about potential earthquakes, though depending on the area, flooding may be much more statistically relevant, and I would hope that the financial investment to place generators on an elevated platform would also make sure they will be rated for a certain level of earthquake... I guess tornados COULD still occur, but I doubt much could be done in that case (other than cross your fingers that it doesn't hit one of the buildings!) That being said... It seems like the big corporations tend to rate their worker safety as... Eh, less than top priority... And I gather (without doing any further research, so idk) that this is not owned by a large corporation, and the sad truth is that this company has to compete in order to economically survive, and the costs of upgrading for them may be too great. From a financial point of view, it seems like the bigger companies are financially rewarded with profits, at the cost of low level employee's safety. This facility seemed to do everything right in the given situation, but I'm sure there are financial drawbacks. :-/ ps I have deep respect for the workers and everyone involved in resolving this case as safely as possible, as well as the workers in the Fukushima plant who did everything possible in order to do anything and everything they could do to minimize the overall loss of life, some while even suffering radiation injuries and loss of life for their efforts - brave, selfless men! The workers on site all did the best they could with what they had! Grateful for so many heroes behind the scenes in these situations... And very glad to see that at least in this instance, the safety of people was top priority to this company!

[@danthewolf1997]

Arkema is a big corporation that has plants all over the world. After binge watching these CSB videos, I decided to look into the Arkema plant a few miles away from my house. They make the same thing here that they did in Texas. I looked up "organic peroxides" and it brought me here. I feel a bit at ease seeing that they aren't incompetent like the rest of the companies on this channel. But, yeah, they'll be fine. They've got billions of dollars.

[@anonym0usplatypus]

Wow those workers were total troopers individually lugging those peroxide containers into trailers through the water. Total heros. I hope they got decent overtime for their work...

[@TheFivepoint1994]

This company handled this situation as well as could be expected. I was in the Houston area during Harvey and received 51 inches of rain in 24 hours. Nothing can prepare you for that amount of rain short of evacuation.

[@jordanhicks5131]

Great video, these guys did everything they could.

[@adamdeffenbaugh9535]

Nice to see a company do things the right way. Workers and management. Good on them.

[@bend8353]

Another fantastic USCSB video!

[@penguin12902]

Wow....so they not only saved all the expensive refrigeration buildings by moving the chemicals onto trailers away from the rest of the facilities, but they also evacuated everyone, and notified emergency crews of the impending danger? Seriously this was about best-case scenario for the situation. A once in 1,000 year flood is not something you can really plan for. Did not expect this in a CSB video! How refreshing to see competent people still exist at chemical companies!

[@cybersquire]

Well, shoot - I give these guys credit. They did everything they could in an impossible situation.

[@off_mah_lawn2074]

The final result was fantastic, great work!

[@kentslocum]

The heroic effort of the workers is comendable, but what's really impressive is that the plant's operators admitted there was a problem and informed local emergency responders.

[@KC0FZZ]

Talk about heroic effort from the Chem Plant workers!

[@mustanguy102]

Those employees did everything in their power. Kudos to them.

[@Zilla__man]

I love the sound effects of these videos

[@lsellclumanetsolarenergyll5071]

WoW at least this Company did the correct thing. I think our Government should award this and make it public how well out planned this worked when you do have a good Emergency plan in place. If possible we should have a federal fund which gives them a Government Grant to rebuild the lost inventory. I think it's great really great to see that CSB even show's how it can be done as it best when mother Nature throws everything at them. Great video.

[@danielsanichiban]

This animation is beautiful work

[@SauThirTonyJaa]

Those workers... the company should keep them forever.

[@Billo1281]

Great job done by these workers.

[@dickfitswell3437]

This is right by our shop and I dont remember hearing about this. I only read about it 2 months ago.

[@19MAD95]

Hell yeah! Victory for safety and good management!

[@reggier2343]

The company had enough foresight to see a potential problem and evacuate well ahead of time.

[@bretyoung1869]

Congrats to the brave plant workers risking their own lives to save others !!!

[@goneutt]

They managed to save the plant. Rare for these videos.

[@amberblyledge7859]

I think they did an amazing job. I'm no expeet, however. I think they tried everything they could. But just a question, could they have precooled the trailers and warehouses far below the recomended temperature to allow a longer time below the decomposition temp? Just curious.

[@pootispiker2866]

The trailers' interiors warm up to ambient temperature in an hour, given reasonable temperatures. Also the cooling capacity of the trailers is limited to what you can do with traditional evaporator/condenser systems.

[@cleaner10399]

One thing that could have been done better, have the reefers transported away from the facility to higher ground, where the fuel tanks would have been above water and kept filled.

[@lewiemcneely9143]

I guess there might not've been any higher ground and the plant didn't want to endanger anyone else.

[@alaric_]

What about if they had no such place on their property? I bet no neigbour would want truckloads of dangerous chemicals in danger of burning violently, perhaps exploding, on their backyard. Transporting farther would have required the use of roads, which were already filled with people escaping. Bottom line, i think this was the least bad option they had.

[@ethanharwell3071]

All of South Texas was under water there was no where to go and no way to get there

[@MrSunrise-]

Thanks Ethan, I was wondering about that.

[@SocialistDistancing]

I'm a nobody but here's what my recommendations would be. Have the grid transformers raided double what the high water mark was. Do the same for any back power systems. Create a high ground area where trailers could be parked for such times if concern. I didn't see the forklifts used, but speculating that a off road forklift may also be a normal practice. The military has large tractor units that can Ford deeper water than a standard commercial unit and can be purchased surplus. Just thoughts on what precautions that I would employ.

[@jjb0894]

It’s one of those rare times where the company did everything they could have to prevent it, it’s honestly not their fault for once. And, fortunately nobody was killed.

[@memorywarrior8752]

They were really up against it with the flooding but did their best to sort out the situation and keep the authorities informed when required. Must have cost the company an absolute fortune.

[@wahidtrynaheghugh260]

Very good!

[@sultanalmahdaly837]

Thank you for sharing

[@chatGPT466]

They did their best!

[@devtrash]

So beyond the actual fire....which would be self-containing in that much flooded area, was there any other dangers?

[@devtrash]

oh there's a followup video kzbin.info/www/bejne/oKW6qnWDrLenY6M

[@dayknowsalchemy]

Huh! First one of these I've watched where a company used logical SOP's and actually did everything RIGHT without sacrificing their workers for profit. Good on you, Arkema.

[@GoldRaven-oe4by]

What do you do when your backups that are backing the backups fail

[@r3tr0nic]

Glad to see no one injured or killed. I agree with others about the circumstances and the COA they implemented. Hopefully, they will be able to look back on this and discover more options they can implement in the future. Protecting against hurricanes is a double whammy... above ground you fight wind, below you get away from wind but then have to fight water... Some ideals that came across my mind, given their location and hurricane potential: *Storage buildings to be underground; Waterproof - Protection against wind force & penetration of flood water - Sump pumps in said buildings to remove water in case of leaks - Generators/refer chillers in rooms well segregated from main chemical storage area - Separate underground storage of fuel for generators - Ability of building to also act as self containment if all else fails (fire control, containment & management) - Remote centralised management of each storage setup Transformers could also be flood protected... but its not a fail proof solution since the grid could still be knocked out. Basically the ideal here is having the chemicals stored in self sustaining 'modules' of sorts, minimising single point failures that can cause total failure. The ultimate goal being protecting life and the environment. Hard to say how much such would cost, or if even feasible for the company. Dealing with chemicals/substances that require energy input to remain stablised is always a potential for disaster...In a way its somewhat similar to nuclear reactors... except far less devastating and everlasting consequences of failure. None the less, always enjoy watching these and getting my mind pondering ways to resolve or remedy problems.

[@GabelhelmSogarbraten]

I love how the Mainstream media reported on this with no factual knowledge whatsoever framing the company and workers as evil and selfish while they did their best informing authorities and risking their own health and lives to buy as much time as possible

[@kosycat1]

i had to go get some almondmilk icecream for this

[@patterm2]

Well handled but with ominous implications. Read: Even with good planning for emergencies and competent execution when needed, systems and people were overrun. More signs of things to come.

[@nightwaves3203]

Did the best they could do. Next time extended days of rain are forecasted just ship the product out of town already.

[@garretthigginbotham6122]

Damn. They kicked ass

[@djpalindrome]

So then why does every petrochemical facility seem to be located in hurricane prone regions like Texas and Louisiana?

[@loganbrown8653]

moved that shit by hand in a hurricane. they deserve a raise, promotion, a paid 2 week vacation, & free pizza for a year. And a medal.

[@jesselevine0]

This is a 2.5d animation

[@keeperofthegood]

Mother Nature is always a step ahead. I would like to know what hind sight was learned here. Would CO2 ice on site have helped? Would better coolers? Would moving off site been a better option than parking on site. Harvey got the better of everyone... next time?

[@jrow84]

keeperofthegood Dry ice, eh? Maybe you have a future in hazmat response. It’s hard to know when to pull the trigger on moving product off site in a situation like that. Good that this turned out ok

[@changingyoutubeusernameisn7302]

Go Arkema!

[@tinhinnh]

A+ for Arkema

[@killman369547]

Seems like this company really did try their best. Unfortunately sometimes your best isn't enough.

[@thorr28]

damn i was expecting a huge explosion!!

[@Smuggzyyy]

Why is there no blue hedgehog in the pic?

[@neilwilson5871]

I do like a happy story, where no-one gets hurt cos no-one messed up