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Explosive Nature of Fine Dust Not Known by Fire Prevention Officer

Monday, March 9, 2015 @ 12:30 PM

Prince George, B.C. – Fire Prevention Officer Captain Steve Feeney had  inspected Lakeland  sawmill on a number of occasions prior to the disastrous explosion in  late April of 2012 and while he had  called on the mill to  clean  up the combustible dust,  he was not aware that dust could explode.In testimony   at the Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths of Glenn Roche and Alan Little,  Feeney reviewed inspection reports he had authored  in November of 2011 and in March of 2012.

In both inspections, he noted  that  there must be  a policy  for regular  clean up of  combustible dust.  While he makes reference to combustible dust in his report,  he testified he  was not aware of the  explosive nature of this fine dust,  that  he was only  referring to it in its ability to catch fire.

It was not until after the explosion and fire at the Babine Forest products mill in January was he made aware of  the explosive  properties of  fine  dust.

In his follow up  inspection, in March of 2012,  he says there was very little dust  in the  mill, that “Efforts to reduce levels of dust did not go unnoticed,” yet the fire department had not yet received the policy  for clean up, or the fire safety plan or evacuation  plan it had  requested.

Combustible dust was not something new in the United States.  For the first  half hour of the  inquest this morning,  the Jury viewed a video that had been produced by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Safety Board.    The  US investigation had  discovered there had been 281 combustible dust  fires and explosions over 25 years in the States which had claimed 119 lives,  and injured 718  workers.

Animation was used to  illustrate how  combustible dust had played a role in a  couple of  significant explosions in the U.S.  The images and sounds from that video were difficult for at least one Lakeland survivor, who buried his head in his hands  through much of the   video, taking moments to wipe way tears.

A combustible dust explosion needs five elements,….. Fuel (dust),  oxygen, ignition, confinement and dispersion.

The American investigation reported that   using compressed air to clean surfaces or machinery of dust can  simply disperse the dust,  that vacuuming with specialized equipment is the  best method of  cleaning such surfaces, and that  combustible dust is an issue for any industry  where  dust  is prevalent, be it   food production, chemical and pharmaceuticals, wood products and metal manufacturing.

 

Comments

While he makes reference to combustible dust in his report, he testified he was not aware of the explosive nature of this fine dust, that he was only referring to it in its ability to catch fire.
………………………
Sounds to me like double speak, how much does this guy get paid, or does he?

I doubt you ever worked in a sawmill or pulpmill piles of dust were up to several feet deep daily and rarely was there any word of a dust explosion even in ERC or ERT we were taught about dust explosions only as far as spraying a pile of dust with a solid water stream and what it could do when hit with that solid stream but as far as operational nobody and I mean nobody gave a second thought to dust explosions

Even Work Safe never mentioned dust explosion until the later 2010s and even then it was only in passing the video that the U.S. made I have seen and even until the mid 2000s dust explosions were prevalent and even now with all the information available there are still dust explosions in the states

I can double damn guarantee you that dust is at the top of Work Safes priorities and most companies in BC as well

I guess he doesn’t watch mythbusters….. the one with the coffee whitener.

Basically anything carbon based with enough suspension in the air acts no different than natural gas. basically one particle burns and burns the next particle, with 20% oxygen available, it can happen very fast.

Just a simple electrical spark, starts off the chain reaction in three dimension.

Sawdust, grain dust, anything carbon.

Lets hope that in the new mill all the electrical will go into dust proof room and what’s outside the room will be in dust proof enclosures at least where beetle kill wood is processed. Maybe.
Cheers

GRAIN elevators, PELLET PLANTS all these fine particulates are combustible. just need the right condition and ignition source

Hes a “fire” prevention officer working within his scope of knowedge. Until these explosive events did you know about the explosive nature of dust and explosive atmospheres? I can guarntee you that alot of fire professionals did not know nature of explosive dust (explosive and combustable are two different terms..)until this happend. Fire professionals (when it comes to explosions) primary feild of expertise is dealing with explosive gas and confined space atmospheres.

Exactly northman

If it was simply a matter of sawdust being explosive then some of the mills that used to pepper the area would be passing Neptune or Uranus by now. Open scragg saws and edgers with boilerplate thick saws in the edgers running w/o water- thick layer of dust on anything that did not move.

The sawmills of today are operating rooms by comparison and maybe there in lies the rub. Majority if course sawduct is collected leaving only the extremely fine and most volatile kind that forms a cloud if an airwand even comes close and stays suspended in the air for much longer.

One other thing that I think should be looked at is the chemical composition of the BK sawdust when compared to run on the mill lodgepole pine. When attacked the trees mount a defence and produce as much pitch as they can in an effort to drive out the bugs.Does higher pitch content make dust more explosive? Any other VOCs produced?

Planer mills also deal with BK wood but bark and cambium layers are gone where the pitch and any other chemicals are located.

There is a big difference between the dust from beetle kill and the dust of past mills that processed none beetle kill wood. It has previously been mentioned that the sawdust are finer and more volatile. Wake up Colleen
Cheers

Wow not aware that dry fine particulate could cause an explosion in the right conditions. That is 101 shop safety stuff. Has he never heard of a grain elevator explosion.

If you were once a child who played with fire you would be well versed in fine particulate.

Sure lots of hindsight experts around.

I have not heard any mention of static electricity. Did static electricity cause the ignition for the explosion? I would be concerned about blowing off equipment with an air hose. When fine dust particles are being displaced at a high rate of speed, friction between the particles can possibly cause a static charge. Also was the air wand used to blow off equipment a conductive or non- coductive material and was the air line grounded properly. I am not an expert on this subject but these are my thoughts.

Interceptor are you a worker in the forest industry are you or have you ever been employed at a sawmill or pulpmill prior to 2012 if you have then all means enlighten me about being an expert because I can answer all the above questions with a yes and I am an expert at dust explosions and I can damn well tell you nobody and I mean nobody in the forest industry before the 2 mill explosions gave a second thought to dust explosions and if there was mention of dust explosions by anyone in the industry or work safe prior to 2012 it was strictly in passing because nobody really had a clue how destructive it could be

Prior to the bug kill wood the majority of the sawdust was wet and heavy in the sawmill. The planer mill had dry dusty sawdust. This changed with the dry bug kill logs coming into the mills

Dearth – I do and I agree with you, no one gave it a second thought. Its all of the “I knew this was going to happen” crowd that my original post refers to.

Interesting how everyone is saying no one knew how combustible the dust was, yet I was reading one of the stories and it commented on how Glenn Roche was banging on the table about the dust and safety and another one (I believe his wife’s statement) said that he was worried enough that he was making sure there was enough money for them if something happened. So it sounds to me like this guy was screaming out loud to all yet no one did anything or listened!

I remember working in the mills and it was bad then and we all talked about the conditions and lack of clean up people! It was to the point if you were moving around in our mill you always looked for an escape route before you started working. And people brought it up, nothing would get done.

Also, don’t know if they still do it, but back then you could always tell when fire inspection was scheduled because all of the sudden there were clean up people and mills were clean, fire inspector called in advance to set up day to look around. If the forewarning calls before inspections are still going on that is one practice that should be stopped and inspector should be able to just go in and see how things really are!!!!

DEARTH the explosions at the old pellet plant on CARRIER FAB shop grounds blew the top right off of the pellet silo. FOUND it 100yds. away, this happened in 2001. FORWARD ahead to 2007ish the door on one of the pellet mills blew right off right thru the wall and over some ATCO trailers some distance away. IF this was known amongst the pellet plants grain elevators that how volatile fine particulate can be how does this yahoo NOT I MEAN NOT know this??? ONLY unless hes being paid to be stupid. THIS fine sawdust is like DYNAMITE WHEN IT GOES OFF.

In WW2, the Russian Army perfected the dust explosion while falling back to Moscow.
In the early seventies, I watched a WW2 German Army video of how to blow up a factory by creating a dust explosion.
The info is out there.

This makes no sense to me also not knowing the explosive nature of dust. inmyopinion–Yes why call ahead to let the employer know you are coming in to do an inspection. I would give them a phone call 10 min. before I showed up for an inspection.

My question is how did this guy become a Captain in the fire department? What’s this, no fire sciences training on the evolutionary scale. Wow and I thought WorkSafe BC was screwed up….

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