explosion occurred at the Buncefield oil depot

EXPLOSION OCCURRED AT THE BUNCEFIELD OIL DEPOT

Introduction

Buncefield explosion is one of the most recent incidents that exposed laxity in regulatory mechanism in the England . The Buncefield accident occurred on Sunday 11th December 2005 at Buncefield oil deport near Hemel Hempstead in Northern London . Various stocks of refined oil products including petrol , aviation turbine fuel , diesel , and gas flamed from Sunday to Wednesday after four days of frantic efforts to put off the fire . It is estimate that particulates and pollutants which were produced from the burning oil products led

to air pollution

Part 1 - Oil storage Regulations

The Buncefield deposit accident as we highlighted earlier was a shock to the nation . It exposed the failure of the legislative framework in putting in place regulation and preventive framework to such major accident related to bulk oil storage (Sceptre Fundraising Team 2006 ,

br 5 . It was reported that before the accident , there were large quantities of vapor which were seen released from a bund in the site which resulted to loss of primary containment . This was later followed by a number of explosions and large fire which engulfed about 21 tanks used in oil storage in the site . Therefore it became clear that if operators had taken into consideration safety provisions as required by the law , this incident would have been earlier reported before it reached to such a magnitude . The systematic failure of the operators to prepare reports as required by COMAH was one of the factors that led...