"According to those who were with him, there was virtually no skin left"

The storage of fuel at our aluminium plants is commonplace. From the storage of propane cylinders, diesel, and gasoline occurs on a daily basis with no issues. On occasion an incident occurs and brings awareness to this hazard sitting in every aluminium plant around the globe. Here is a recent incident:

Black clouds of smoke, which hoisted above the Aluminum Plant in an Asian city, frightened eyewitnesses to this state of emergency. Ambulances and firefighters rushed to the scene. The fire broke out in a matter of minutes and already covered a decent area when rescuers arrived. It turned out that the fuel tank caught fire. It happened one day during the end of September 2018 around 17:00.

As specified the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the region, the ignition area was 15 square meters. For a whole hour, the fire brigade extinguished a huge flame and only by 18.40 did the fire be eliminated. Unfortunately, one of the workers suffered. His ambulance was taken to hospital with severe burns. The cause of the fire is to be established by experts.

Subsequent news media reports the worker succumbed to his burns which covered 90% of his body. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog prays for the deceased workers family, friends, and coworkers. We also pray for the emergency management staff and hospital staff that worked hard for many hours in treating the injured worker. They did not give up, unfortunately the worker succumbed to his injuries during the night.

We sadly do not hold out much hope on finding out further information about this incident due circumstances beyond our control. If we do we will update this post.

Regardless, with little to no information on the root cause we can make one assumption. An ignition source came into contact with the flammable fuel. For the reader, what ignition sources can come into contact with your fuel storage at your plant? List the answers and then investigate engineering controls to mitigate those possibilities.

Please comment.