In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, Brian Dunagan, Managing Consultant and Chief Investigator at IFO Group, discusses his experience with combustible dust investigations.
Brian is a certified fire and explosion Investigator and a certified fire investigator instructor who has led and managed multiple, extremely large-loss process safety incidents investigations. Using this background, he answers questions like the following:
- What is the first thing a company should do if they experience a fire or explosion in the facility?
- What does the investigation process look like?
- What does analysis look like?
What is the First Thing a Company Should Do if They Experience a Fire or Explosion in the Facility?
Brian said that the first thing he advises clients is to plan ahead and assume that they will eventually have a combustible dust incident.
“Pre-planning really pays huge dividends. If you have a loss or an incident, you’re not Googling for someone to help you at 3:00 in the morning. You’ve already established those relationships beforehand and integrating is part of your emergency response plan. I think it is a really good approach to making sure that you’re prepared and you’re ready in the (hopefully) unlikely event, that you have an incident.”
What Does the Investigation Process Look Like?
“One of the big things that have to be determined quite early on is who’s going to be the lead on the investigation,” Brian says. “We go to some places where the local authorities who may generally investigate this kind of incident don’t have the experience or the expertise to do these types of investigations. We did one in Arizona, for example: a dust explosion. The local fire marshal and even the state fire marshal had very, very limited experience with dust explosions and fires. So in that case, we actually worked with those agencies to help our client reach a final conclusion with the investigation.”
Once the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) is identified, the next step is to secure the scene to make sure that evidence isn’t lost or destroyed and do any necessary crisis management. For example, if the facility is heavily destroyed, who do you need to notify if you’re going to incur your force majeure clauses in your contracts because you may not be able to produce the product for a period of time? For a lot of companies, that’s a massive crisis. Their customers are expecting deliveries and you may or may not be able to fulfil those contractual obligations due to the emergency at your facility.
Brian said that the next step is usually to document the scene.
“That’s where technology has come a long way. For example, we use drones quite extensively in these incidents. Now we use LIDAR scanning. The advantage to doing this is it allows us to actually build a 3D computer model of the scene. We can actually use virtual reality headsets and handsets and walk back through the scene over and over again, even years in the future. Many times after the scene, the initial scene is just gone, it doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s a huge advantage to us. It’s probably one of the biggest changes that we’ve seen in just how we do our investigations.”
In recent years, social media evidence has played a role in incident investigation. Even if site security cameras aren’t working, bystanders will take photos and video and post them on Facebook or Twitter.
“That’s been invaluable to us, and that’s a typical process for us during an investigation – searching social media or things like that and potential witnesses,” Brian says.
Detailed timelines are essential to an investigation because they help investigators understand fire growth, stage fire growth, and determine if, for example, a suppression system was in operation during the fire, because that will often be a point of contention.
Regarding team size, Brian said that at the minimum, there are five or six investigators on a site, although that number can increase to 20 in some cases. If there are concerns about the stability of the structures, there may be several forensic structural engineers on the investigation team, along with process engineers, mechanical engineers and electrical engineers.
“Since these large investigations tend to generate a very large volume of evidence, we have dedicated evidence custodians and evidence technicians on these investigations to make sure that we can keep track of all that evidence as it flows in,” Brian says. “We’ve got a positive chain of custody on all of those pieces of evidence as they come in. And it’s even more critical when we start actually collecting physical evidence, which can be as small as a tiny spring to large piping or duct sections, for example, or large motors.”
What Does Analysis Look Like?
A detailed analysis answers questions like the following:
- Where did the fire start?
- What’s the origin of the fire or explosion?
- What was the ignition source?
“If it’s a dust explosion, the first thing we’ll look at is your DHA,” Brian says. “I’m somewhat shocked at just how frequently we find folks who are handling combustible dust and have not completed a DHA, or if they have one, it’s quite outdated. So that’s one of those first things that we look at during a dust explosion or a fire is looking at their DHA.”
The team also determines whether any controls expected to prevent these incidents failed- provided there were any to begin with. They also try to collect dust samples to send to the lab: even if a DHA had been done previously, it’s possible that either the dust was not representative of what they were actually handling or they’d changed their processes to the point where their initial dust testing was no longer of value.
“We did a dust fire and explosion a few months ago where that client had actually sent their dust to me to be tested,” Brian recalled. “The size of the dust particles that they sent were quite large, and they did not represent the dust that they were handling on that site or in their ductwork. As it turned out, there was an explosion and fire caused by finer dust. But if you look at their DHA and other lab results that they have in hand, you would believe that that dust was only marginally combustible when in fact, it was actually quite combustible, especially the smaller particle sizes that they were handling in probably 90% of their process.”
Conclusion
Brian concluded the interview with the following insights and recommendations:
- Update your DHA regularly. For example, if you change suppliers, don’t wait five years for the next revision.
- Make sure employees know what to do during an emergency.
- Make sure employers do a good job in their PPE selection.
These steps help ensure that if an incident does occur, it can be treated as a lesson learned while minimizing the risk of employee injury or death.
If you would like to discuss further, leave your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach Brian Dunagan directly:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandunagan1/
Website: https://ifogroup.com/
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Dust Safety Share
Companies
IFO Group
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