W
Wilier
Guest
OK, so Im on nights, start of shift and Im in Yahoo chatting with young Laz-r-us and I get a call to meet the Plant Leader at one of our GOHDS reactors. This is a 200ft tower that removes sulphur from the Gas Oil feed to our Coking unit. It runs at 600psi at about 700deg C. Anyway, I gets out there, climbs to the top and finds that there is a gasket that has (technical term) sprung. ie. its gonna leak, real soon.
So we put in an emergency call to get the ERT (of which I am a member) to come and standby while the Ops shut the unit down, the danger being as the temps and pressures decrease, there is a likleyhood of the gasket letting go BIG TIME.
10 minutes later and off she goes, big leak, big fire. Exciting huh? The big fire wasnt really the problem, there is nothing above the tower, so the flames pretty much went up, but the leak also dropped flames onto other bits of kit in the area, so we ended up having to get hand lines out to fight the small fires.
During extinguishing one of these small fires, me and my hose team got into a bit of a situation where there was another, smaller, leak down on the ground, flames jetting out toward us we had to try and "bend" the flame away to get to the isolation valves. This was working fine, we were advancing toward the valve, pushing the jet back when my mule behinfd me taps on me shoulder (I was on the branch)
"Phil, your leg......."
with all the noise, i didnt hear him right
"eh???" I shouts
"your leg...."
"...its on fire mate"
AAHHhhhhhhh bugger, now I can feel the heat, fuck what do I do?? If I try to put it out with the branch, the jet will smack us square in the chest, I f I leave it, Im gonna burn. Im worried now, its getting hot, my kits on fire, Im beginning to panic..........
Luckily one of the other teams saw the problem and directed their spray at us, which put my leg out, but we had to continue to extinguish the leak.
Suffice to say that now, 2 hrs later, the fires and leak are all out. Im hot and bothered, but uninjured. But the unit is a bit charred.
Hey-ho, another fine day at "Europes safest, cleanest most profitable refinery"
Apologies for the length.
So we put in an emergency call to get the ERT (of which I am a member) to come and standby while the Ops shut the unit down, the danger being as the temps and pressures decrease, there is a likleyhood of the gasket letting go BIG TIME.
10 minutes later and off she goes, big leak, big fire. Exciting huh? The big fire wasnt really the problem, there is nothing above the tower, so the flames pretty much went up, but the leak also dropped flames onto other bits of kit in the area, so we ended up having to get hand lines out to fight the small fires.
During extinguishing one of these small fires, me and my hose team got into a bit of a situation where there was another, smaller, leak down on the ground, flames jetting out toward us we had to try and "bend" the flame away to get to the isolation valves. This was working fine, we were advancing toward the valve, pushing the jet back when my mule behinfd me taps on me shoulder (I was on the branch)
"Phil, your leg......."
with all the noise, i didnt hear him right
"eh???" I shouts
"your leg...."
"...its on fire mate"
AAHHhhhhhhh bugger, now I can feel the heat, fuck what do I do?? If I try to put it out with the branch, the jet will smack us square in the chest, I f I leave it, Im gonna burn. Im worried now, its getting hot, my kits on fire, Im beginning to panic..........
Luckily one of the other teams saw the problem and directed their spray at us, which put my leg out, but we had to continue to extinguish the leak.
Suffice to say that now, 2 hrs later, the fires and leak are all out. Im hot and bothered, but uninjured. But the unit is a bit charred.
Hey-ho, another fine day at "Europes safest, cleanest most profitable refinery"
Apologies for the length.
