Lessons from Harvey - II

PART - I 

Revisiting risk assessment

Hurricanes like Katrina, Harvey and Irma can no longer be considered as “acts of God” or Black Swan events. They are now the new normal and risk matrices need to be reconstructed. Weather experts believe that hurricanes will get more frequent and more powerful as a fallout of Global Warming. Chemical Industry needs to have plans in place to deal with them. Mathematically speaking, risk is a product of severity and likelihood. Likelihood of monster hurricanes like Harvey and Irma need to be ratcheted up by one or even two levels. This will alter our risk perception completely and will call for new safeguards and disaster management plans.

Hazop is another risk management tool that needs a serious rethink. While a lot of attention gets lavished on the ISBL plant during Hazop study, the OSBL plant gets a short shrift. It is the OSBL that has the biggest foot print, usually several multiples of the ISBL. Again, it is the OSBL that holds most of the inventory in the plant. OSBL comes across as a poor unglamorous cousin of ISBL during design, engineering, personnel training, operation and maintenance of a process plant. Even in education curricula it hardly gets the importance it deserves. This approach and attitude needs to change.

Plants, especially those on sea coasts, can be asked to redo Hazops considering flooding and power outage as a cause. The worst credible consequence and safeguards for this scenario should be placed in public domain. This will go a long way to improve the trust and confidence of the larger community around the plant.