"did not specify the cause of the fire...."

 

The importance of training when an incident occurs cannot be understated. Here is an incident in our opinion that training prevented a serious incident from becoming much worse.

An aluminium company said today a fire incident occurred one morning during the first week of April 2021 smelting plant in Southeast Asia. In a filing today, the aluminium company, however, did not specify the cause of the fire, which occurred at 4.30am.

The company is principally engaged in the manufacturing of aluminium products. "The fire incident occurred at the new Phase 3 operations of the (name omitted) Smelter, which is primarily under commissioning; and damaged one smelting pot out of the total of three hundred smelting pots located at the plant. Other existing production facilities at the (name omitted) Smelter were not affected and are running as normal. The fire did not cause any harm to any persons,” (aluminium company) said.

According to (aluminium company), Phase 3 operations were restored within several hours. "There was minimal interruption and the installation ramp-up of the smelting line in Phase 3 will recommence immediately after the damaged pot is repaired within the next few days. "There is no material financial and operational impact on the operations of the (name omitted) Smelter arising from this incident as the operations in Phase 3 were restored within several hours and all assets are adequately covered by insurance,” (aluminum company) said.

Incidents in potlines can have tremendous consequences in terms of safety and financially to a company. It is because of this that in our opinion that every potline departments stress training. If the potline department in this incident did not properly and repeatedly train their workers on what to do if a pot fire occurred the consequences could have been severe.

We are ecstatic that no one was injured. We did want to comment that news media articles that we reviewed the company refused to comment on the cause. We teach company managers never to say "no comment", nor provide no information regarding an incident. Why? Because without information the news media will make assumptions. Almost always the assumptions made are incorrect. But, because the aluminium company did not respond the incorrect assumptions are considered fact by the local surrounding communities. We have seen it countless times.  

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