Also published in 10x Curiosity

Learning the lessons of previous process disasters is an important goal for process engineers working in heavy industry. When dealing with high temperatures, pressures and volatile and often toxic substances things can go wrong quickly. It is important that the lessons of others are applied so that history doesn’t repeat. There are many informative sources of information online such as the US Chemical Safety Board or the Disaster Cast podcast.

One of the major industrial disasters in Australia was the 1998 explosion at Esso’s Longford facility in Victoria. There are many lessons that have been drawn from this disaster as a result of the scrutiny it received under the Royal Commission established to investigate it. Broadly the main lessons relevant to loss prevention are:

A more detailed summary of Andrew Hopkins book “Lessons from Longford” can be found here and in this paper also by Hopkins:

This Disaster Cast podcast focus’s in some detail on the accident with a slightly different perspective on the lessons that can be drawn from it.

A couple of other interesting items worth consideration through the various reports include:

Many of the lessons from Longford have been repeated in subsequent process industry disasters, notable the BP Texas City explosion.