Hell on rails: the Industrial Accident Scenario: fires spread from a tanker car and jeopardize the facilities of Texas’ largest city. “Houston, we have a problem,” is the understatement of the day
The Hypothetical Scenario:
The fire begins in a rail tanker car loaded with gasoline in the railyards within the international port serving the petrochemical refineries along the shipping channel in Houston.
The yards are unusually crowded with a three-month backlog of tanker cars and other rolling stock following a labor dispute and above-average summer demand.
Fanned by strong onshore winds, the fire spreads from tanker to tanker, incinerating the power lines so that the emergency water systems fail and emergency responders are unable to contain the blaze. The railcar tankers are temporarily parked along sidings adjacent to a tank farm, and despite the best efforts of the firefighters, flames reach to first one and then several 10-million gallon oil-storage tanks.
The flames from these tanks reach 100 feet into the sky, and as the sides of one of the tanks ruptures, a river of burning oil gushes across into the neighboring liquefied natural gas facility, the site of a series of giant pressurized tanks.
The fierce heat causes the first tank to explode. The blast, equivalent to 100 tons of TNT, destroys buildings and equipment within a radius of half a mile. Windows break in buildings up to three miles away. Two other tanks explode before the fire is over.
However, alongside the gasoline tankers are two rail tankers containing 90 tons of liquid chlorine, destined for the water treatment plants of Houston.