147 - Wildfire Industrial Interface and risk assessment with Eulàlia Planas

Transcript

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Hello everybody.

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My name is Wojciech Węgrzyński, I'm a professor at the Building Research Institute ITB in Poland, and today I'm going to learn what happens when you cross wildfire with a Cervezo industrial facility of high risk.

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This is a topic that would not immediately come to my mind.

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I have never thought about merging industrial fire protection and wildfires.

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To me, these two sub-disciplines are pretty far away from each other, but luckily my guest Professor, eulalia Planas from Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya.

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She has been running two groups that were doing those subjects and in a nice way she's combined our powers to create a group or a research task that focuses on wildland industrial interface WII.

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And yeah, it's quite a fascinating world where risk analysis meets firebrands and all the hazards that normally come from the wildfires.

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We've probably heard a lot about the wildfire urban interface, so the problem is kind of similar, just the consequences are a bit different, because we are talking here about high risk industrial facilities and it's not just the fact that they can be damaged and there can be loss, because those are very expensive installations, it's also that they carry a lot of materials, lots of substances.

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It's also that they carry a lot of materials, lots of substances, a lot of potential impacts that can domino from a wildfire and create a significantly bigger catastrophical outcome if that facility is severely damaged by a wildfire, not to mention the monetary loss or the life loss or, in general, the loss related to such an event.

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In this episode, we discuss how industrial facilities are endangered by wildfires, what can we do to protect them, what can we do to actually assess the risk and investigate if those facilities need special protection, what to pay attention for and what mechanisms to look up?

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So, yeah, please join me.

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Welcoming Professor Ulalia Planes.

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Let's spin the intro and learn something about Wildland Industrial Interface.

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Welcome to the Firesize Show.

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My name is Wojciech Wigrzynski and I will be your host.

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This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants.

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Hello everybody, I'm here today with Professor Lolia Planas from Poltechnica in Catalunya.

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Hello Lolia, good to see you.

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Hello Wojciech.

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Thanks for inviting me.

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Happy to be here.

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Welcome back to the Firesense show.

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I hope IMFSE is doing great in Catalonia.

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But here today we're going to talk about your research and your group has been very well doing in the industrial and risk management fire safety, let's say and I know there was a group doing wildfires.

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And then something interesting happened between those groups, and I'm not sure if you coined the term, but I definitely heard it first from you you started working on something called Wildland Industrial Interface, WII.

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I'm not sure if that's easier or harder than WUI.

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You guys need to work on your shortcuts, but anyway, tell me, like how did Wildland Industrial Interface research area happen at all?

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Yeah, well, the thing is that our research group have been working in doing research to improve risk assessment and process safety in industrial installations, Basically focused on chemical and petrochemical industries, and then for some years we have been also working in the field of wildland fires, wildfire behavior, wildfire analysis and monitoring, and also in the wildland-urban interface.

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So it's when looking at what happens in the wildland-urban interface, so how fires, wildfires can damage and can affect really urban settlements when you realize that within urban settlements we also have industries and industries that deal and process substances that are hazardous and that can, if affected, can cause further damage, can cause accidents that also can be very, very dangerous for the population, also for the environment and for the economy itself.

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So that's why we started to look at the problem of the wildland industrial interface to analyze a little bit this problem.

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So perhaps I'm using bad words, but we are kind of considering like the petrochemical plant as kind of a bomb, you know like environmental bomb.

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If it all goes wrong it can go very wrong.

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And the wildfire hazard there's some sort of a trigger to that.

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How does the challenge of a fire from wildlands, coming from the wildland urban interface into the plant, differentiate from your normal hazards?

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You would consider, while developing fire safety in like a petrochemical industry, is it a different challenge?

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Yeah, I think it's not a very, very significant different challenge, but it has many differences that have to be taken into account.

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Well, first is that process engineers or safety engineers working in those kind of industrial installations do not usually do not know anything about wildfires and what it implies.

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So this is the first important thing.

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Then, of course, when we analyze risk in a chemical plant well, this has been going on for many, many years.

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Currently we have, in general, very safe plants.

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We have laws and standards that ensure that our chemical plants work properly and with a high level of safety.

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But then in those kind of studies, what we usually take into account is the potential or probability of failure of equipment for different reasons that can give rise or can originate an eventual release, loss of containment of dangerous substance.

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And then we analyze what happens if this release takes place.

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If the substance is toxic, that can give rise to a toxic cloud that can affect the population, what happens if the substance is flammable?

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Then you can have an explosion or a fire, different types of fires, poor fires or jet fires, etc.

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And but usually, when you do that in a normal way, it's just one event that you consider at the same time.

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Ok, of course, you consider all the events that potentially can take place and you take measures to avoid that.

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So you apply safety barriers to avoid those accidents to happen when there is a wildfire.

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We need to rethink a little bit all of that, and in fact.

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So, first thing, a wildfire is a natural event that can have an impact to an industrial installation, can have an impact to an industrial installation.

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This type of events it's something what we call natick events, natural events that impact technological, let's say, industries, and this has been studied for many years, let's say, because it's not something new.

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We already know that floods, earthquakes, other types of natural events can have an impact in industrial installations and generate accidents, and this has happened also in the past in many countries around the world.

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We are seeing now an increase, due to climate change, in the number of natick events occurring.

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So natick events have already been studied, mostly in the field of floods, earthquakes, because our, let's say, larger phenomena that affects extended surfaces I think a very brutal example would be fukushima nuclear power plant after a tsunami.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And it was kind of built in a way that was protecting itself against a tsunami.

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They just didn't, or perhaps they expected, but they were okay with the risk that it's like.

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It has to be like one in a thousand year tsunami to reach that far and then multiple cascading things led to one to another where perhaps, if it was just I'm now hypothesizing, I don't have a very intimate knowledge of this event, but I would assume that if a failure happened, like one reactor or one part of the plant, they would have stuff put in place to stop propagation of this catastrophe.

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But when it happens to every single building at the very single time, suddenly the measures that are meant to isolate the thing are not working.

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From my limited professional education in the process safety as a fire safety engineer, we had a course on industrial fire protection the thing we were looking at is propagation, like you cannot prevent every single incident in your plant but you must make sure that the events do not propagate between parts of the facility.

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So if there is a tank on fire, you have this big bath that you capture all the oil so it doesn't spill around in a very simple means, but this isolates you from something coming from inside.

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Here, if you suddenly have a fire triggered in multiple places, those new vulnerabilities appear.

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It's suddenly a completely different hazard.

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And I think in here you're shifting the entire paradigm of how do we protect the power plant.

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Because here suddenly, in this setting, what we've been doing post-Cervezo in the entire world of Process City may not be enough.

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I wonder how easy it is for fire to spread into the facility.

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So, like you know, in the entire world of process it may not be enough.

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I wonder, like, how easy it is for fire to spread into the facility, because I also don't think we build like plants in the middle of forest, right, actually, my laboratory is built in the middle of forest, but that's not what normal people would do.

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Yeah Well, two things.

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First, we are thinking first, of course, to type of Seveso installation.

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First, we are thinking first, of course, to type of Seveso installations.

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Seveso plants are those that are under regulation of the Seveso directive, which means that they handle hazardous substances in large amounts, let's say.

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But we should not forget that there are many, many industrial installations that also handle hazardous substances in lesser amounts, which are not under the CERESO directive.

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But if fire reaches those installations, we will also have a problem.

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Okay, so I think we need to be aware in the case of wildfire, not only on CERESO plants but also on those other, let's say, no such large plants, but that are spread everywhere.

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This is the first thing.

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Then, looking at Seveso plants, of course, in general and this applies also to other type of industrial installations In general we think that industrial sites are quite far from the forest or from vegetated areas, and that's partly true, not completely true, because if you look at the map you can see many in the middle of the forest, but it's not the common thing.

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Usually they are in industrial areas with other industries and with, let's say, a separated or a fringe of land free of vegetation or with a lower amount of vegetation which somehow protect them.

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I think that something that usually comes to mind when thinking about okay, there is a wildfire and this can threat my installation.

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You are thinking on the fire front reaching your plant, which is the flames and the heat radiation reaching your plant.

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The wall of fire.

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Arriving there and then you look at the distance and you say no, no, that's not possible, or it's very low probability or it would be quite far.

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Radiation will not reach high levels when arriving near the plant.

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But wildfires do not have only these impacts, which are, let's say, direct impingement of the flames or the heat radiation.

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There are two other impacts linked to wildfires, which is ember attack, rain of embers, flying, glowing embers and the fire environment itself.

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And when I say fire environment, I mean smoke obscuration, low visibility, high temperatures in general and strong winds temperatures in general and strong winds.

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And I think that these two, let's say, impacts fire attack and ember attack and the fire environment in case of industrial installations is something we need to think about more than the impact of the fire fronts reaching the installation in general.

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So, in other words, you don't have to have your facility in the middle of the forest to be actually vulnerable to what's happening during a wildfire event.

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Exactly Okay.

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You can have your forest.

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Of course you need to be near a forest somehow, but not, let's say, to have the forest at 100 meters apart.

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So the forest can be 500 meters, one kilometer, even up to five kilometers, because firebrands can travel long distances.

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Of course, if you have the forest more close, then the probability of having more firebrands and also the fire itself reaching the installation is higher.

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I am to some extent familiar with the firebrand ignition of houses and I know the work of IBHS, your new postdoc, simona, who was in my office.

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She was studying the firebrand ignition of houses, so I got some basic understanding of firebrand accumulation problem and what it takes.

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But when I see a house, I see a wooden structure, bushes around it, some nice architectural features which would be made out of timber.

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I see a lot of vulnerabilities.

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When I think about land, I see like a brick and mortar building or a steel rectangle which doesn't look that much flammable.

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Okay, you have things like tanks, which probably would be the most vulnerable, and I know you also had papers on that.

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So how is it, how actually easy it is or how hard it is to actually cause a fire in a storage tank?

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Like, is it actually possible that wildfire is present?

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So if we are thinking about a storage tank, a closed storage tank, I wouldn't say there is a large probability.

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They are quite safe.

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I mean are made of steel.

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But there are, for instance, floating roof tanks, typically used with flammable liquids stored at ambient temperature.

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These floating roof tanks have a seal around, so the roof of the tank goes with the liquid level and this is to release because they are, let's say, they have a high volatility so they release vapors quite easily.

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So that way you minimize the release of vapors, flammable vapors.

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But still there is that rim which somehow is releasing a little bit of flammable vapors.

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And what happens?

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If you start having fire ants arriving there, Then these flammable vapors can ignite and then you have the ignition of the contents of your tank.

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That's a possible situation, very possible situation.

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Another thing is that in many plants they have like what we call attics zones, zones in you already know you may have flammable atmospheres.

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You cannot avoid them.

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Then, of course, in a normal situation for a plant, these areas that are well identified and are well known are protected with different means.

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Also, they avoid all kinds of ignition sources in those areas.

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But what happens if you have a wildfire near the plant, then you cannot avoid having ignition sources that are coming from the sky and landing in your plant.

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So that's another situation.

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Now we are thinking like in the big installations and things like that, but then many, many plants, they have little storage, usually on the borders of the plant, with smaller, let's say, tanks or storage units, sometimes made of plastic.

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That's something you are not thinking about too much because it's not your dangerous or the most dangerous equipment in your plan, but then this can be the starting point of a biggest fire in your plant.

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So this is some example.

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It's even some sort of a strategy to create safety by, you know, splitting your whatever you're containing into smaller containers, you know, and spread them around, so you don't have one massive tank with 10,000 cubic meters of something.

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You split it into smaller tanks and those storages can be outdoors, because the point of those tanks is that they're protected from weather because they're plastic, so definitely there's a buildup of flammable and perhaps dangerous material inside of them.

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And what you said about ATEX zones yeah, that's the main strategy to remove the ignition sources.

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We spent an unimaginable amount of money on, uh, you know, atix certified equipment, valves and everything, because they are supposed to not create any sort of ignition source, and then you are in under a shower of firebrands.

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I think.

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One another element perhaps uh, not something that sets your entire plant on fire and destroys it, but those are interconnected installations.

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Like, if I think about the large petrochemical facility and I had the chance to visit the biggest one in Poland when I was a student the thing that struck me is those like thousands of kilometers of pipes and cables, like it's an unimaginable array of, you know, connection between all of those facilities.

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Yes, the facilities are far away from each other, but the interconnection between them, the blood network of the plant, is insane.

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And this is because those are interconnected processes.

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If you take one out, the entire process stops.

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So there is like a risk to continuity of the operations of the plant, even from a small fire.

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Even if you hit one valve, it can potentially affect the plant.

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Have you tried to estimate, like when should the factory stop its operation when the wildfire is approaching, because a small fire can take out the process?

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Yeah, that's key.

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Of course, usually when there is a wildfire, the first thing that this kind of plan should do is shut down the plan.

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But this is something that is not just pushing a button.

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Sometimes shutting down a plan requires a lot, a lot of time.

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So you need to think about it before to plan it, to say, OK, if there is a wildfire, when should I start the procedure to shoot down the plant?

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Because at the end, if you have not done this exercise, then everything comes rushing no-transcript.

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And something we have not discussed yet but that we need to think about, that too is up to now we have been thinking on the direct impact of the wildfire on equipment that can then fail.

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If an equipment fail, you can have an accident, another fire, an explosion, and this has a cascading effect, what we call a domino effect that can affect other equipment.

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But what has been seen in natick events, in other type of natick events, is that not often it's not only the natural event impacts directly the equipment.

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So that situation of can fail.

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A big tank can fail because of the wildfire.

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Well, that's very low probability because it's protected in many ways, because it's made of steel, because many, many different reasons.

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What usually happens in inatic events is that what fails is the auxiliary systems or the planned utilities that fail first, and then this carries other consequences for your equipment.

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Or safety barriers fail, for instance.

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What happens?

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All your tanks usually are protected with sprinklers or a kind of system to extinguish if there is a fire.

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What if those systems activate without a fire because they detect the presence of fire runs or whatever?

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Then they start releasing water when there is no risk at that moment, but then maybe you have spent your water before and when you have your problem then you need to those resources.

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You don't have them.

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So there are many, many different types of situations that you need to think about and plan ahead.

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Even like the population displacement as well, because you would have, like, a local population working at your factory and if those people are at risk they are perhaps you know they will be living around the factory.

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You can think about this.

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Some of them will be living closer to the fire, some further, so you might have quite a displaced population and simply run out of people to run your factory.

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There's also some interaction that changes the way how the building and the factory operates and what you just said, the auxiliary fighters.

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You suddenly create a new vulnerability in your facility, like perhaps something that would not be a hazard before because you had three different safety systems in place to contain that hazard.

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You suddenly have two of them gone, just one, and then this is a risk that is unaccepted.

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Were there any like very big industry fires that you could originate to, like wildfire origin or like WII fires that you can think of?

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Well, just this February in Chile I don't know if you heard that there was quite severe wildland neuron interface fire in the area of Valparaiso and Viña del Mar.

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There was a summer school in combustion last year in that place.

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Well it was beginning of this, 2024, february 2024.

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It was not a large wildfire in terms of hectares burned, but it was a very large wildland urban interface.

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But it was a very large wildland urban interface.

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So the fire of those explosions and things and how this exactly happened, but it's been recorded and it's been registered and it's not the only one.

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So the thing is that it's difficult to look at that.

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I've been trying to look at what has happened before during wildfires affecting industrial installations, but there is no official record of that.

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The statistics do not record these kind of events and you usually need to go through the news in mass media and that's difficult because usually they focus more if it affected the population and dwellings and buildings and houses, then you don't have the information on the industry side.

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But I think it's increasing.

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You've mentioned NATO incidents and I guess it's something that the industry was very well aware of since the beginning of the industry, actually, since the beginning of the industry actually and where we're not really building plants where you can have tsunamis or floods, or you're probably more thinking about the earthquake appearances we try to not build those very key facilities in those vulnerable places.

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Perhaps that's not always the case, however, forests and the wildfire urban interface is probably a new threat when it comes to already existing facilities.

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My question is how big is the problem?

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How many of such facilities there are?

00:27:14.041 --> 00:27:17.291
Well, I don't have the number exactly.

00:27:17.291 --> 00:27:37.595
I know that, for instance, in the US they identified like type of industries located in high risk wildfire risk areas and they identified around 300, 350, if I remember well, out of 11,000.

00:27:37.595 --> 00:27:43.291
But in France they also did a study of those installations.

00:27:43.291 --> 00:27:46.819
But in France they also did a study of those installations.

00:27:46.819 --> 00:27:54.304
Of course the way you define the areas at risk is different from one place to another, so it's not comparable.

00:27:54.304 --> 00:28:04.798
But in France they have around 1,200 Cepeso industries and also around 300 are in wildfire prone areas.

00:28:04.798 --> 00:28:12.595
So they identified around 25% of their Seveso sites could be affected.

00:28:12.595 --> 00:28:22.674
That means if you are in those places you need to take that into account when analyzing the risk in your plant.

00:28:22.674 --> 00:28:26.190
That's what Sevesoil directive says.

00:28:26.190 --> 00:28:35.614
You need to look also at the external risk, but up to now usually wildfire risk was not considered in those studies.

00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:54.405
I'm looking on your paper on mapping the areas in Europe and in Asia and from what's in the paper it seems that it is the wildland industrial interface represents 2.5% of European land, or 6% of the wildland fuel areas.

00:28:54.405 --> 00:28:56.184
That's actually a lot.

00:28:56.184 --> 00:28:57.928
That's 15 mega hectares.

00:28:57.928 --> 00:29:05.249
Never seen someone use mega hectares for area, so that tells you that it's potentially quite a lot.

00:29:05.249 --> 00:29:11.113
And if I look at the map it's disturbingly a lot in Germany, in Poland and Sweden.

00:29:11.941 --> 00:29:20.313
It's kind of interesting because I also had an episode in the Fire Science show with Nieves Fernandez-Anez who was talking about the fires moving up north.

00:29:20.313 --> 00:29:27.932
You know the new hazards emerging in places that did not really know were ready for wildfires to come.

00:29:27.932 --> 00:29:47.373
And here it's another level of this interesting dynamic that it's not just the settlements of people, it's not just, you know, evacuation pathways, but the bloodline of the industry, of economy, the industrial things, and I know we have big plans that will be nearby forests in Poland, germany.

00:29:47.373 --> 00:29:53.932
Let's try and talk about how could one actually make their facility ready.

00:29:53.932 --> 00:29:57.430
In your paper you mentioned quality of risk assessment.

00:29:57.430 --> 00:30:07.464
So perhaps we could talk about QRA and how this can help us figure out, like how to protect the facility against wildfires.

00:30:07.464 --> 00:30:10.372
Perhaps first you could give me an introduction to QRA.

00:30:10.372 --> 00:30:14.268
I don't think I've ever had a proper QRA episode in Fire Science Show.

00:30:14.268 --> 00:30:15.951
Perhaps we should do one.

00:30:16.874 --> 00:30:19.905
Well, that's not a possibility for another day?

00:30:20.849 --> 00:30:27.440
Give me a five minute introduction and then we'll decide possibility for another day, give me a five minute introduction and then we'll decide.

00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:34.683
Yeah, well, the quantitative risk assessment in a chemical plant, let's say, involves several steps.

00:30:34.683 --> 00:30:45.059
So briefly, first we need to identify the potential hazards that can occur, and this is mostly linked to the type of substances hazardous substances you have, let's say.

00:30:45.059 --> 00:30:55.990
Then we need to quantify the well, two things the probability of those events occurring, because, okay, let's say risk assessment, what's risk?

00:30:55.990 --> 00:30:56.682
Risk?

00:30:56.682 --> 00:31:01.165
No, it's the combination of the probability of a hazardous event to happen with the potential consequences.

00:31:01.165 --> 00:31:04.960
So usually, to quantify it, you need to quantify the probability of a hazardous event to happen with the potential consequences.

00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:28.426
So usually, to quantify it, you need to quantify the probability of occurrence and then the consequences, usually in terms of economic money that will cost, but usually we don't take into account money but we take into account the potential number of deaths or injured people that you can cause if that accident happened.

00:31:28.426 --> 00:31:33.964
So we need to deal with those two elements of the equation.

00:31:33.964 --> 00:31:45.513
So first we need to identify the frequency with which those events can happen and then we need to quantify the probability of having deaths due to that event to happen.

00:31:45.513 --> 00:31:55.808
So the probability usually is deal with, because there has been many, many different studies and years that this has been going on.

00:31:55.940 --> 00:32:03.440
So we already usually deal with different types of loss of containment events standardized loss of containment events standardized loss of containment events.

00:32:03.579 --> 00:32:20.486
For example, you have a tank with a flammable substance, then you imagine what will happen if there is the total loss of containment, if the tank fails completely and all the contents is released, what happens if there is a hole in the tank, etc.

00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:41.415
So there are different standardized types of loss of containment events that you already know the probability of those events and then you, by means usually of event trees, you analyze if that substance is released due to that loss of containment, what is the final accident that can happen.

00:32:41.415 --> 00:33:28.076
I can have a toxic cloud or an explosion or whatever and the event tree helps you obtaining the final probability of those accidents and then for each one of those accidents, you need to evaluate the consequences, which means that if it's, let's say, an explosion, which means that if it's, let's say, an explosion, then you need to evaluate the overpressure generated by this explosion around and evaluate depending on the number of population you have.

00:33:28.076 --> 00:33:29.679
Then you can compute the probability of that due to that overpressure.

00:33:29.679 --> 00:33:37.038
So basically, this is what is done very quickly, but taking into account all the possible loss of containment events in your plan and all the possible final accidental scenarios, and you sum up all of these to have the overall risk that plan has.

00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:41.865
And within this type of analysis, you can also test different protection scenarios.

00:33:41.865 --> 00:33:47.354
You can test different safety routines and see what works best in reducing risk.

00:33:47.354 --> 00:33:48.275
No, it doesn't.

00:33:48.275 --> 00:33:51.088
That's my understanding of risk engineering.

00:33:51.359 --> 00:33:55.832
Yeah, of course you take into account the already safety barriers existing in the plan.

00:33:55.832 --> 00:34:01.920
That will reduce because you can do the risk analysis without taking anything into account.

00:34:01.920 --> 00:34:04.186
That will be not realistic.

00:34:04.186 --> 00:34:07.665
That's why we put safety measures in place.

00:34:07.665 --> 00:34:16.284
So of course, when you have different kinds of elements to protect your plant, you take that also into account.

00:34:16.284 --> 00:34:25.452
That will reduce, for example, the time during which the substance is being released, so the release will be with a lower amount.

00:34:25.452 --> 00:34:31.733
You will have other kind of elements that can protect you against the final consequences.

00:34:31.880 --> 00:34:33.887
And that's of course taken into account.

00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:42.572
In the paper, which I'll link in the show notes, of course there's a general procedure described for wildfire, industrial QRA.

00:34:42.572 --> 00:34:48.853
So I'll just read through the steps and then perhaps we can go deeper in some of them.

00:34:48.853 --> 00:34:51.362
So, first step wildfire scenario identification and characterization.

00:34:51.362 --> 00:34:58.407
Then, second, identification of the critical equipment that, when affected by wildfire, can lead to hazardous situations.

00:34:58.407 --> 00:35:04.148
The third step identification of the damage modalities that wildfire can cause to critical equipment.

00:35:04.148 --> 00:35:09.833
The fourth one wildfire hazard identification due to both direct and indirect causes.

00:35:09.833 --> 00:35:12.608
The fifth one wildfire consequences analysis.

00:35:12.608 --> 00:35:14.989
And finally, the risk calculation.

00:35:14.989 --> 00:35:25.210
Wildfire scenarios identification, characterization I guess that's what's coming from the outside, so what kind of fires you can have, and that's probably an identification of what types of forests you are around.

00:35:25.210 --> 00:35:30.231
Is this a pine forest or this is a different type of forest?

00:35:30.231 --> 00:35:31.905
So I guess let's skip that one.

00:35:31.905 --> 00:35:36.663
Critical equipment we briefly talked about it, but maybe you can reiterate Like what would be the.

00:35:37.326 --> 00:35:54.648
Yeah, so you skip the first part, but maybe, oh, you want to no, not that I want, but I think it's one of the most important, because we don't have that exactly characterized and it's something that we need still to do research on, because this implies two things.

00:35:54.648 --> 00:36:01.146
First, to assign a probability of having a wildfire there, if you want to quantify it.

00:36:01.146 --> 00:36:05.971
So that belongs to what we call fire regime.

00:36:07.163 --> 00:36:10.449
I didn't think about that we may have data to obtain that.

00:36:10.539 --> 00:36:17.989
But then there is the wildfire exposure scenarios, which is what I talked to you about heat radiation, flame contact, ember attack.

00:36:17.989 --> 00:36:20.628
But then what about ember attack?

00:36:20.628 --> 00:36:23.365
What should we expect in terms of ember attack?

00:36:23.365 --> 00:36:26.333
How many embers, what's the concentration?

00:36:26.333 --> 00:36:38.554
So to try to then identify and see what kind of loss of containment events can happen, you need to know previously what kind of attack would you expect.

00:36:38.554 --> 00:36:40.900
So that's something that some research still needs to be done.

00:36:40.900 --> 00:36:54.268
So that's something that some research still needs to be done, and it's something that we are currently working with Simona, precisely on analyzing the potential of wildfire ember attack to industrial equipments.

00:36:55.349 --> 00:36:59.391
I very naively assume that it's already solved.

00:36:59.391 --> 00:37:00.592
But it's fire science.

00:37:00.592 --> 00:37:02.614
Nothing is solved Exactly.

00:37:02.614 --> 00:37:07.496
And you're right when you said the frequency, it was immediate to me.

00:37:07.496 --> 00:37:10.338
You said risk is frequency times the consequences.

00:37:10.338 --> 00:37:18.614
So you first need to know how often the welfare can happen to get any number out of the process, because if you don't have the first number you cannot process anything.

00:37:18.614 --> 00:37:21.208
But let's try to go further.

00:37:21.208 --> 00:37:24.431
My intention was to focus on how can we solve it.

00:37:24.431 --> 00:37:28.867
So so perhaps that was also why I went into this pathway of thinking.

00:37:28.867 --> 00:37:36.451
Let's try the critical equipment, if we can reiterate what's critical in in your and how to identify the critical equipment yeah.

00:37:36.610 --> 00:37:49.000
So then we you need to look at your plant and look at what equipment you think could really be affected by these different exposure scenarios.

00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:59.195
So fire run, heat temperature increasing, strong winds, obscuration and the flying embers and things like that.

00:37:59.195 --> 00:38:12.373
And ashes a lot of ash too, because maybe some of your sensors are visual, so if the ashes cover them, then they don't function properly.

00:38:12.373 --> 00:38:14.853
So you need to think about that.

00:38:14.853 --> 00:38:18.612
So, some storage equipment of course you need to look at that.

00:38:18.612 --> 00:38:26.878
Attic zones we already discussed that, but there are also other types of storage of heat-sensitive substances.

00:38:26.878 --> 00:38:41.521
So maybe you don't need the embers or just the increase in the external, in the ambient temperature that, out of normal ranges, let's say, can have an impact on them.

00:38:42.445 --> 00:38:47.552
Now I think that the post-fire safety assessment of such a plant must be a hell to perform.

00:38:47.552 --> 00:38:56.846
If you went through one and nothing happened, but then to make sure you can resume your operations, normally that must be a hell Anyway.

00:38:56.846 --> 00:38:59.956
Next step was the damage to the critical equipment.

00:38:59.956 --> 00:39:02.373
So is this through default trees?

00:39:02.373 --> 00:39:03.751
How do you perform that?

00:39:04.726 --> 00:39:06.132
So that's the second step.

00:39:06.132 --> 00:39:12.255
So once you identify your equipment, you need to see how this can fail due to the external attack.

00:39:12.255 --> 00:39:16.028
It's a total failure of the tank or there will be.

00:39:16.028 --> 00:39:19.056
What kind of loss of containment you expect?

00:39:19.056 --> 00:39:25.697
And this has to be defined somehow if you want to quantify the later consequences.

00:39:25.697 --> 00:39:43.914
But in here also you should take into account which is not done in a normal QRA the disruption of the auxiliary and utility systems and also the potential disruption of the safety barriers or malfunction of the safety barriers.

00:39:43.914 --> 00:39:48.757
That's something that you would need to consider in that step.

00:39:48.757 --> 00:39:50.371
Nothing has been done yet.

00:39:51.126 --> 00:39:54.715
You've used a very specific wording damage modalities in the list.

00:39:54.715 --> 00:39:55.577
What's that?

00:39:56.686 --> 00:39:57.931
Damage modalities.

00:39:57.931 --> 00:40:00.731
Is that so what you expect?

00:40:00.731 --> 00:40:03.056
To happen on the equipment.

00:40:04.224 --> 00:40:06.471
The modes of damage in other words Exactly.

00:40:06.471 --> 00:40:09.610
Okay, good, not a native speaker.

00:40:09.610 --> 00:40:10.347
You're not.

00:40:10.347 --> 00:40:11.592
You shouldn't know that either.

00:40:11.592 --> 00:40:14.664
Just kidding, let's go further.

00:40:14.664 --> 00:40:19.336
Hazard identification due to both direct and indirect causes.

00:40:19.336 --> 00:40:25.418
So is this looking more like a normal purpose QRA you'd perform at the factory, exactly.

00:40:25.905 --> 00:40:40.836
So in here you will use, or you may use, typical tools that are currently already used in a typical QRA, but you need to look at if they have to be applied in the same way.

00:40:41.445 --> 00:40:54.498
For instance, I talked before about okay, once I have defined my loss of containment, then I can build an event tree to look at the final accidental scenarios.

00:40:54.498 --> 00:41:08.592
For instance, if an event tree, if it's flammable substances typically we have event trees in which you analyze if there is immediate ignition or not there is a probability for that.

00:41:08.592 --> 00:41:24.954
If there is a probability for ignition depending on different kind of situations in the plant, if you have a very well protected or you avoid ignition sources, then your probability of ignition will be very low, etc.

00:41:24.954 --> 00:41:33.514
So and we already have those probabilities of the event tree, well known more or less for classical core rays.

00:41:33.514 --> 00:41:35.010
But what happens here?

00:41:35.010 --> 00:41:48.259
Maybe those probabilities we are now assigning to the different branches of the MN tree, we need to rethink them when there is a wildfire, because we may not be sure that you can avoid those.

00:41:48.259 --> 00:41:56.440
So maybe the probability of ignition in that case will be one instead of 70% or 50%.

00:41:57.447 --> 00:42:07.521
I wonder how can you perform analysis of parallel events happening, because that's not something that QRA methods would define at and here.

00:42:07.521 --> 00:42:17.992
If you have two events happening in a parallel, it's not like a sum of those damages, it can be a multiplication of that and it must create a very interesting dynamics within your plan.

00:42:17.992 --> 00:42:23.751
Like almost like you you're, you start at the middle of the domino already, not at the beginning of the domino, right?

00:42:23.751 --> 00:42:27.793
So is there any methodologies that allow you to account for this?

00:42:27.833 --> 00:42:39.670
Yeah, so currently QRAs do not take into account the simultaneity of two scenarios happening at the same time, because I mean so we take into account the domino effect.

00:42:39.670 --> 00:42:43.157
So one scenario happens and this can generate another scenario.

00:42:43.157 --> 00:42:44.824
This is taken into account.

00:42:44.824 --> 00:42:58.155
But what is not currently taken into account is if two very different scenarios happen at the same time in the plant, which actually in a wildfire, in NATEC events in general.

00:42:58.155 --> 00:43:21.460
This can happen and this requires a different strategy, let's say for considering all the probabilities, so all the probabilistic calculation, let's say in the core rate, but then also in terms of computing the consequences of all these scenarios happening simultaneously.

00:43:21.460 --> 00:43:29.599
That's something that's not been done in the past because usually it's something that doesn't occur commonly.

00:43:30.585 --> 00:43:32.972
In the end of your process there's consequence analysis.

00:43:32.972 --> 00:43:39.291
That moves into risk calculation Any differences compared to your normal QA.

00:43:39.291 --> 00:43:45.460
That would come because of the wildfire hazard or it's just an outcome of all the previous steps that make the difference.

00:43:45.945 --> 00:43:46.465
Exactly.

00:43:46.465 --> 00:43:59.237
I think that the final risk calculation will be similar, except for the fact that you need to consider those simultaneous probabilities of different accidents happening at the same time.

00:43:59.237 --> 00:44:04.702
But this is more in the field of probabilistic science.

00:44:04.702 --> 00:44:15.740
At the end, the sum up of all the events that can happen and or will compute finally or will give us the total risk of the plant.

00:44:16.385 --> 00:44:22.617
For the final part of the interview, I would like to take you out of the factory or out of the Cervezo plant for a brief while.

00:44:22.617 --> 00:44:31.726
So industry is not just, you know, those big plants, but it's also the power lines that connects, like high amounts of electricity to them.

00:44:31.726 --> 00:44:45.197
It would be the pipelines, the oil pipelines, the gas pipelines, water transit, whatever it would be, the communication, the roads, the trains, everything that connects all those industries together.

00:44:45.197 --> 00:45:00.672
Did you consider also vulnerability of things like that, like what extent, for example, a wildfire can take out the power in a specific region to the point where it actually affects the factory, and in this case factory can be 50 kilometers away.

00:45:00.733 --> 00:45:06.516
But if the Right, so this is not directly taken into account in a core rate.

00:45:06.635 --> 00:45:12.965
Okay, but this has to be taken into account when planning for the emergency management.

00:45:13.706 --> 00:45:40.018
So emergency plans of industrial installations should consider all these situations, and I would say this is even more important than computing or performing a QRA, because to be able to perform a QRA properly, taking into account welfare risk, I think we still need to do a lot of research and improve our methodologies a lot for that.

00:45:40.545 --> 00:46:00.117
But even if we don't have that, even if we don't know exactly how much the risk is increased due to the wildfire quantitatively, if we are in a situation in which we know we can be threatened by a wildfire, we need to consider that in our emergency plan.

00:46:00.117 --> 00:46:30.342
So take into account the potential failure of utilities because the power line just doesn't work anymore, because it has been taken down by the wildfire or for any other reason this is something that they usually also consider, because it can happen for other reasons but also the eventual failure of supply of some chemicals due to the pipelines that have been affected by a wildfire.

00:46:30.342 --> 00:46:35.291
All these situations have to be taken into account in the emergency plan.

00:46:35.291 --> 00:46:49.789
What will we do if a wildfire threatens the plan in some way and plan ahead and have a protocol to how we will deal with that, just to not improvise when that happens.

00:46:51.168 --> 00:47:01.724
And I think fires like that actually happened already, like there was this Fort McMurray fire, which was in oil rich areas and I think it disturbed a lot of the old networks.

00:47:01.724 --> 00:47:04.875
That was one of the big consequences for that fire.

00:47:04.875 --> 00:47:18.724
Regarding the power lines, this is actually a very interesting dynamic because to the best of my knowledge, shutting down the power lines is one of the ignition prevention methodologies used in California.

00:47:18.724 --> 00:47:34.900
We've heard about the power shutdowns that were planned because the wildfire weather is extreme and I don't know how exactly wires set down fires on fire, but I guess there's some methodology that creates hot pieces that fall down.

00:47:35.702 --> 00:47:43.449
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is definitely situations in which power lines can be the ignition of a wildfire.

00:47:43.449 --> 00:47:50.014
That's why sometimes they shut down also auxiliary power systems, backup systems to work in those situations.

00:47:50.014 --> 00:48:20.958
So I can imagine if there is a power shutdown they can work temporarily with their own power systems and then if necessary they can shut down the plant also in a proper way.

00:48:21.744 --> 00:48:36.744
Very fascinating thing to study, I think, especially the fact that it really challenges the paradigm, like it's going from a single possible course of fire into considering parallel fires happening at different scales in the facility.

00:48:36.744 --> 00:48:38.789
That's a complete.

00:48:38.789 --> 00:48:46.994
That's like the, the nightmare of risk engineering, you know, yes, but something we need to face.

00:48:46.994 --> 00:48:55.532
So at the end let's plug the European Fire Safety Science Congress that you're organizing.

00:48:55.532 --> 00:48:58.452
So how are the papers coming in?

00:48:58.452 --> 00:49:00.670
When we published the episode?

00:49:00.670 --> 00:49:05.554
The due is long gone, but I hope you're getting a lot of good submissions for the conference.

00:49:06.164 --> 00:49:10.152
Yeah, so our deadline is still not meet.

00:49:10.152 --> 00:49:17.208
So we are already receiving papers and we hope we will receive a lot of more in the coming days.

00:49:17.208 --> 00:49:22.956
So we decided to extend, finally, the one week, the deadline.

00:49:22.956 --> 00:49:32.114
That deadline was 1st of April, but just we realized that it coincides with Eastern holidays, so we decided to just postpone for one week.

00:49:32.114 --> 00:49:41.932
So it will be finally 8th of April the deadline and, yeah, we are expecting a lot of papers coming in.

00:49:42.644 --> 00:49:44.873
And when exactly is the conference happening, and where?

00:49:45.085 --> 00:50:04.128
Yeah, the conference is happening from 9th to 11th October 2024 in Barcelona, so this will take place in the Barcelona Institute of Engineering, which is in the newest campus of UPC, near the sea.

00:50:04.128 --> 00:50:13.817
Very beautiful area, very nice facilities and, yeah, we are very happy to welcome everyone to Barcelona.

00:50:14.907 --> 00:50:19.105
I think everyone is very happy with the choice of the location of the conference.

00:50:19.105 --> 00:50:24.797
Sounds like a great reason to visit Barcelona this October.

00:50:24.797 --> 00:50:26.509
Is it warm in October?

00:50:26.509 --> 00:50:27.251
Can you swim in the sea?

00:50:27.713 --> 00:50:28.315
Usually yes.

00:50:28.315 --> 00:50:41.226
I mean, when I was young, October was already autumn and bad weather somehow, but now I mean we are having summer temperatures until November in Barcelona.

00:50:41.226 --> 00:50:44.492
So yes, if it's not raining.

00:50:44.492 --> 00:50:48.679
You can go to the beach which is nearby and have fun.

00:50:49.585 --> 00:50:50.869
No rain is going to stop me.

00:50:50.869 --> 00:50:56.827
Anyway, Ilaria, thank you very much for this interesting discussion.

00:50:56.827 --> 00:51:00.817
Thank you for touching this important subject.

00:51:00.817 --> 00:51:08.108
I have somehow a feeling the importance of this will rise a lot after the first very.

00:51:08.108 --> 00:51:10.710
I really hope we don't have a fire Cervezo.

00:51:10.710 --> 00:51:25.893
You know wildfire Cervezo incident, but in some ways it's perhaps inevitable, Like, the more preparedness we build up to that point, the more preparedness we build up to that point, the more knowledge we build up to that point, the safer and less consequential that will be.

00:51:25.893 --> 00:51:34.351
And I'm very happy that you are working and your team is working on this before the big accident, Exactly, we're always like how couldn't you see that?

00:51:34.351 --> 00:51:35.570
How couldn't you see that coming?

00:51:35.570 --> 00:51:38.190
Like, no, we're working on it and hopefully it never comes.

00:51:38.846 --> 00:51:39.610
But hopefully yeah.

00:51:41.045 --> 00:51:41.347
Great, see that coming Like.

00:51:41.347 --> 00:51:42.083
No, we're working on it and hopefully it never comes.

00:51:42.083 --> 00:51:42.831
Hopefully, yeah, great talking to you and thank you, see you around.

00:51:42.831 --> 00:51:43.452
It was a pleasure.

00:51:43.713 --> 00:51:44.735
Thank you, Wojciech.

00:51:45.829 --> 00:51:46.255
And that's it.

00:51:46.255 --> 00:51:47.813
I hope you've enjoyed it.

00:51:47.813 --> 00:51:50.612
World of industrial fire protection, world of wildfires.

00:51:50.612 --> 00:51:53.588
I did not think you can easily connect those two worlds.

00:51:53.588 --> 00:52:02.253
It doesn't come to my mind very automatically that it's possible to join them, but Eulalia's group has actually done that and it seems a very interesting piece of study.

00:52:02.945 --> 00:52:06.525
So many factories that are vulnerable to wildfires.

00:52:06.525 --> 00:52:10.032
In some extent you don't have to have a factory in the middle of a forest.

00:52:10.032 --> 00:52:18.891
It's enough to be in the range of firebrands or perhaps in the range of disruption of the fire itself to cause a significant damage.

00:52:18.891 --> 00:52:25.253
And, as Eulalia said, it's not just an on-off button for a power plant or a petrochemical plant.

00:52:25.253 --> 00:52:33.525
It's a process that you need to plan ahead, that costs a lot of money and that is very challenging to reverse, to start over the plant.

00:52:33.525 --> 00:52:36.510
So those decisions must be extremely tough.

00:52:36.510 --> 00:52:46.001
I'm really glad that our group and other groups in the world are working on this before we had the first major catastrophical industrial fire in the wildfires.

00:52:46.001 --> 00:52:56.532
I hope we never have that but realistically, like summarized in the end of the episode, it's in a way inevitable and great that we're getting prepared and starting it already.

00:52:56.532 --> 00:53:08.527
I hope it was also interesting from the perspective of simply doing QRA all the risk analysis for plants because methodologies for non-natec events will be very similar.

00:53:08.527 --> 00:53:15.773
We didn't have that much risk engineering in the fire science show and I know in some parts of the world it's the main thing that fire engineers do.

00:53:15.773 --> 00:53:25.757
So hopefully you have enjoyed this and you've learned something new or refreshed your knowledge or at least have gained a new view on this extremely important subject.

00:53:25.757 --> 00:53:28.588
Anyway, that is it for today's episode.

00:53:28.789 --> 00:53:42.847
I am very excited because on April 11th and Thursday actually if you're listening this on the launch, it's kind of tomorrow that a spin-off podcast to the Fire Science Show is about to launch.

00:53:42.847 --> 00:54:07.692
It's a project called Uncovered Witness Fire Science Revelations and in that we go deep into the fundamentals of fire science with multiple guests, with narrated perspectives, with multiple real-world examples of catastrophical fires, the lessons that came from them, how we've improved, how it is changing, how it is growing, where are we heading and hopefully an interesting series.

00:54:07.692 --> 00:54:14.934

147 - Wildfire Industrial Interface and risk assessment with Eulàlia Planas

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