The deadly gas pipeline explosions that occurred on July 31 and Aug. 1 in Greater Kaohsiung were shocking, and the scale of the damage left the area looking like a scene from The Day After Tomorrow.
Most of the focus following the disaster revolved around the public’s doubts over whether the local fire department had acted appropriately during the three-hour window that is so crucial in disaster relief, how LCY Chemical Corp — who everyone was blaming for the explosions — kept insisting it was not guilty, and the location of hundreds of industrial petrochemical pipelines running through residential areas where tens of thousands of people live.
In order to stop such a tragedy from happening again, short, medium and long-term strategies for restoring areas after gas pipeline explosions need to be drawn up addressing aspects such as disaster prevention and rescue, underground pipeline management and overall urban planning.
That the information currently available on the underground pipelines is not accurate forced the government to ask the petrochemical companies to clarify whether their pipelines had leaked and even blame LCY Chemical for covering up information about its pipelines.
Even more preposterous is that the government only asked petrochemical companies for their pipeline layout drawings after the explosions had occurred.
The government should keep accurate and detailed records of the locations of these dangerous underground petrochemical pipelines and keep this information in a constantly updated system. This is the only way that the government can demand that petrochemical companies shut down the pipelines as soon as a leak occurs, which would also help when evacuating residents. The government should also take the lead in disclosing this kind of information to the local community and allow everyone complete access to it.
A medium-term strategy for disaster prevention and rescue should involve the government establishing standard operating procedures and tools for disaster relief involving chemical gasses. It should also include the establishment of a joint system for disaster prevention and rescue with the Chemical Corps Division of the National Armed Forces and collaboration between the two parties to improve their skills in chemical gas disaster prevention and rescue. Medium-term strategies for underground pipeline management should include replacing all pipelines installed in storm sewer systems and completely removing petrochemical pipelines from residential areas.
The gas pipeline explosions in Greater Kaohsiung were so powerful because the explosions occurred in a storm sewer system due to leaking flammable gasses that had filled the entire system. When the concentration of flammable gasses reached tipping point, explosions went off like a string of firecrackers along the entire length of the system. The volume of the storm sewer system was far greater than that of the petrochemical pipelines, thus making the explosion as powerful and destructive as a bomb.
In future, the only correct and safe way to go about building underground pipelines would be to use separate ducts covered securely by earth.
Underground pipelines can be divided into pipelines for critical infrastructure and petrochemical pipelines. Pipelines for critical infrastructure are a basic necessity and for this reason they must be built in residential areas. However, underground petrochemical pipelines should be completely removed from metropolitan residential areas.
In order to avoid short-term impacts being too large for petrochemical companies to cope with, safer petrochemical pipelines could still be used as long as they are visible above the ground in residential areas or alternatively, trucks could be used to transport flammable gasses through residential areas.
The most important long-term strategy for dealing with gas pipeline explosions is to change outdated ideas about urban planning that only look good on paper. For example, industrial areas in Greater Kaohsiung that overlap with or are located next to metropolitan residential areas should gradually be rezoned into non-industrial areas, while overall function and demand should be considered when establishing industrial areas. Such considerations should acknowledge the risk that complementary measures used underground and above ground could cause a disaster in the surrounding area.
Of course, the competent government authorities also have an unshirkable responsibility to make companies cooperate with urban replanning. Metropolitan disaster prevention and safety are invaluable and cannot be made up for by profits made by petrochemical companies.
Johnson Kung is chairman of the Engineers Times, published by the Taiwan Professional Civil Engineers’ Association.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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