(138b) Fire Pre-Plans – What to Know When Things Get Hot
AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety
2022
2022 Spring Meeting and 18th Global Congress on Process Safety Proceedings
Global Congress on Process Safety
Emergency Planning and Response
Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 8:30am to 9:00am
A fire pre-plan describes major aspects related to a specific fire scenario, which includes the available firefighting resources, the materials involved, individual responsibilities, and factors that may cause fire to escalate. Fire pre-plans should be a âlivingâ document that aligns with the facility firefighting philosophy and is frequently updated to capture the changes in process conditions and firefighting resources. How do we then develop a fire pre-plan that has plant-wide buy-in and is dynamic in its very essence? The process of developing a fire pre-plan should involve all the stakeholders that are directly or indirectly concerned with the facility emergency response plan and ought to be built on the foundation of a detailed âFire Hazard Analysisâ (FHA) of the facility.
An FHA is referred to as a âFire Hazard and Mitigation Analysisâ (FHMA) when it also includes a thorough review and analysis of available and necessary mitigations that already exist and/or those that may be recommended at the facility, in addition to examining the potential consequences of the fire. Such a process ensures a more comprehensive examination of both the fire hazards and the available protection systems, emergency response capabilities, and other supporting resources.
This paper will illustrate how unit-specific fire pre-plans can be developed using the data derived from the FHMA. The stakeholder involvement and interaction of a well-conducted FHMA develops ownership of this unique pre-plan development and implementation process. Moreover, the resultant pre-plan will be an evergreen document that can be easily updated to include site changes.