Category Archives: Firefighting

Hydraulic Fracturing – accumulating record not particularly reassuring

Recent reports about the effects of hydraulic fracturing. Note that a critical aspect of this issue is the pressurized disposal of wastewater, which is injected (or perhaps more accurately re-injected) rather than the initial energy (gas) collection.

Mark Drajem, correspondent for Bloomberg News, reporting Fracking Tied to Unusual Rise in Earthquakes in U.S.

A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly” man-made, and may be caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists said in a study.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades until 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011.

Those statistics, included in the abstract of a research paper to be discussed at the Seismological Society of America conference next week in San Diego, will add pressure on an energy industry already confronting more regulation of the process of hydraulic fracturing.

“Our scientists cite a series of examples for which an uptick in seismic activity is observed in areas where the disposal of wastewater through deep-well injection increased significantly,” David Hayes, the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, said in a blog post yesterday, describing research by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey.

‘Fairly Small’ Quakes

The earthquakes were “fairly small,” and rarely caused damage, Hayes said.

He said not all wastewater disposal wells induce earthquakes, and there is no way of knowing if a disposal well will cause a temblor.

Last month, Ohio officials concluded that earthquakes there last year probably were caused by wastewater from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas injected into a disposal well.

In hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — water, sand and chemicals are injected into deep shale formations to break apart underground rock and free natural gas trapped deep underground. Much of that water comes back up to the surface and must then be disposed of.

There’s “a difference between disposal injection wells and hydraulically fractured wells,” Daniel Whitten, a spokesman for the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, which represents companies such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (COG), said in an e-mail. “There are over 140,000 disposal wells in America, with only a handful potentially linked to seismic activity.”

Let’s assume for the moment that seismic activity is linked to disposal wells, infrequently, as Mr. Whitten claims, at a rate of “a handful” for every 140,000 wells. To use round numbers, and use conservative estimates, let’s say “a handful” is five, out of a set of 100,000 (rounding 140,000 down by nearly one-third). That’s fifty seismic events per 1 million disposal wells. The United States “natural gas” ((It’s our understanding that we are, for the most part, talking about methane.)) industry is planning to rapidly and widely expand domestic exploration.

What’s the acceptable safety rate for seismic events caused by methane extraction? If we embark upon an ambitious program, and create one million new disposal wells (and fifty seismic events) per year, how long will it take for us to yield a catastrophic event?

For the moment, we will set aside the other risks: the toxic nature of methane, which is odorless, flammable, and can easily reach 2000°F (1093°C).

WWII-era fire apparatus, Australia (image by Kristarella)

WWII-era ladder truck. Image by Kristarella/Kristarella.com

We’ve got a few reasons for publishing this image: Kristarella, an outstanding web designer and software developer, is also a fabulous photographer, and we encourage you to check out her Photoblog for page after  page of images which will capture your curiousity, imagination and awe. But that’s not, strictly speaking, on-topic.  These reasons are:

  1. We’re about to run a series of posts about firefighting apparatus – which is to say vehicles, mobile firefighting equipment, as opposed to infrastructure (fire water mains, sprinklers, hand-held gear and, as important as the rest, prevention), and thought this mid-20th century piece would be a good reference point;
  2. Note the following screenshot: Kristarella is a leader in managing the metadata – EXIF   (Exchangeable image file format, Wikipedia entry; see alsoEXIF.org) which accompanies digital images. We hope to explore the ways in which EXIF data and images might be used to crowd source risk assessment, disaster planning, and disaster response. So we’ll be exploring Kristarella’s Thesography Plugin, and more tools that will exploit EXIF and other usable meta-data.

Open Fire Academy

In another example of the power of Open Source information, we recommend the Open Fire Academy.

Open Fire Academy is a nonprofit, collaborative resource for emergency services organizations and centers of learning. The key element of a community is that it evolves and expands based on its members commitment. Looking beyond simply building a web-based learning tool, we are creating a central point for sharing ideas, training resources, and research information by breaking down the barriers that hinder communication. As such, we are following the philosophy of Open Source Development by making the content of this community “free and open” to those who wish to utilize it and are open to sharing their own findings and information. The site itself is created and the content is generated by the staff, instructors, students, and committed members of the community.

Open Fire Academy. More to come.

Con Ed Urged to Improve Its Response to Gas Leaks/P.S.C. gently applies pressure to Con Edison

Ken Belson of the Times reported in June that state investigators had “suggested … ways that Consolidated Edison and the New York City Fire Department can better coordinate their response to gas leaks.”

After a seven-month investigation, the Public Service Commission is recommending that the utility ask firefighters to remain until safe conditions are restored, improve the way information about gas leaks is shared and set parameters for ordering evacuations.

The Fire Department and Con Edison were criticized for how they handled the deadly explosion, at a house in Sunnyside, on Nov. 21. The Fire Department said it did nothing wrong when it left after checking a report of a gas odor because Con Edison officials had taken control of the situation. The utility said it acted appropriately because it did not have information suggesting that any of the people in the houses in the area were in danger.

A 69-year-old woman, Kunta Oza, who lived at 48-19 41st Street, died a day after being burned in the explosion.

Con Edison, which said it followed its established procedures for dealing with gas leaks on the day of the explosion, has since improved its protocols, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We’ve worked closely with the Fire Department with respect to improving procedures for responding to gas complaints, maintaining emergency personnel presence on site and coordinating evacuations when necessary,” said the spokesman, Michael Clendenin.

Con Edison has already implemented some of the “actions to improve safety” that were recommended by the Public Service Commission. On Wednesday, staff investigators discussed their findings from the explosion at a commission meeting in Albany. The investigation is complete, but the report has not yet been released.

But Kenneth P. Thompson, a lawyer who is representing Mrs. Oza’s family in a civil suit against Con Edison, said the investigators’ findings showed that “Con Ed was negligent and caused Mrs. Oza’s death.” The report, he said, includes details about rusted gas pipes.

“Con Ed had a duty to fix that pipe, and that it wasn’t on their priority list shows they were negligent,” Mr. Thompson said. Mrs. Oza’s family is seeking $100 million in damages from Con Edison.

Officials for Con Edison said the utility did not comment on pending lawsuits.

Councilman Eric N. Gioia, who represents Sunnyside, said the commission had ignored the destruction caused by the explosion and should penalize Con Edison. (The commission did not assess penalties as part of the investigation.)

“The Public Service Commission continues to confirm our worst fears that they are little more than a public shield for Con Ed’s behavior instead of being the watchdog they need to be,” Mr. Gioia said. “Whether it’s getting electrocuted, steam pipe explosions or this, at most, the Public Service Commission gives them a slap on the wrist.”

Con Ed Urged to Improve Its Response to Gas Leaks, June 19, 2008 .

Interestingly, the Public Service Commission entitled its press release

GAS DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES IMPROVE SAFETY RECORD
-Effort Underway to Further Improve Safety Performance–

On the same day that it expanded the definition of “major” system failure so that it means a system failure for 10% or more of Con Ed’s customers a maximum fine of $10 million, and a maximum of three

incidents per year. ” PSC Redefines Major Outages for Con Edison.” Have three major incidents – and the fourth, fifth and sixth – and every later one – are on the house. – Con Ed admits to having 3.176 million customers (SeeCon Ed Fact Sheet here) – so the message here is – try to keep the system failures to 300,000 customers or less – but if things get very bad – you’ll never have to pay more than $30 million in fines.

This doesn’t seem like a particularly effective deterrent.

See also:

Queens Crap Blog coverage of Con Edison issue(s)

New York Sun coverage of Con Ed

Wikipedia firefighting and emergency management resources

A few weeks back, my friend and neighbor Gary Osgood

explained Wikipedia’s vetting process; I had only the notion – from mainstream media – that whoever posted last posted loudest.

[singlepic=46,320,240,,] From Wikipedia’s Firefighting Page.
Turns out that the peer-reviewed and featured pieces have been subject to pretty vigorous editing and fact-checking. It’s a small percentage, that are fully vetted, but the number that have useful starting points. As Gary points out in his Wikipedia user profile,

As overwhelming [as] the dreck

may be in Wikipedia, one can still type that word into Wikipedia’s search box and get an answer that stumbles toward the truth, leaving the reader with at least a little clue. That small miracle still happens more often that not.

And often there’s a bit of redundancy – for instance, two entries on Prospect Park, both good – Gary has contributed to one, and is the principal contributor to the entry on Aymar Embury II.

I hadn’t realized until today the extent and number of the firefighting resources. Here’s a sample from the excellent entry on Palm Beach, Florida’s emergency responders:

In 2004 the County Commission approved a resolution allowing for funding for the Fire-Rescue Communications Center to come out of the General Fund instead of the Fire-Rescue budget. This change meant that now any city that wanted to be dispatched by Fire-Rescue could do so without having to negotiate a price and a contract, since all taxpayers were paying for it anyway. The concept behind this was to create a “Regionalized Dispatch Center” where the closest unit could be dispatched to a call, regardless of municipal boundaries. This was initially met with opposition from a few cities, citing that this construed “Double Taxation”, as they were already providing dispatch services to their own departments yet their citizens were being taxed for the Countywide system. Recently, more and more cities are coming into the new system.

This is typical of the entry: concise, and addresses to complex logistical issues, how the political process addresses and resolves the problem. The principal drafter of the entry is, it appears, an active serving member of the PBCFR, has also provided the entry “Quint (fire apparatus),” which is a type of “apparatus that serves the dual purpose of an engine and a ladder truck.”

There’s much more on this and related subject in Wikipedia – and I’ll try to point them out in future posts. wpfslogo.jpgwpfslogo.jpg
If you’d like a good starting point – it might be at The Wiki Project:FireService.