SHARED LEARNING – ARE WE LEARNING??

JOIFF is dedicated to Shared Learning and circulates to its membership information relating to incidents that occur in High Hazard Industry to raise awareness so that members can consider errors that caused the misfortunes of some to educate against the same mistakes being repeated in their own location.

JOIFF’s Shared Learning goes beyond news reports with comment, background, Guidelines etc. aimed at improving the knowledge and increasing the competence of persons engaged in emergency services management in preventing and/or mitigating hazardous incidents in Industry, in particular those persons who respond to incidents primarily in High Hazard Industry.

Brazil China China

India India India India Indonesia Iran Malaysia Malaysia

Pakistan Russia Russia South Korea Spain Sweden USA Fire at Petrobras’s REDUC refinery Explosion at chemical plant Explosion leaves 19 Dead & 189 injured after tanker truck careers from highway into factory 9 Dead - Thousands in hospital after styrene gas leak Assam oil well still leaking gas one week after blowout Huge fire now breaks out at gas well blowout Blast in chemical Factory: 8 killed, more than 50 injured 7 Dead - At least 22 Injured in oil tanker fire Fire at Tehran oil refinery kills one, injures another Five dead in Fire at Petronas-Aramco petrochemicals complex In Johor Oil storage tank catches fire due to lightning at Hengyuan’s Malaysian refinery Pilot of crashed PIA plane ignored warnings three times before crash Use anti-tank shells to put out oilfield fire Mining giant behind major arctic fuel spill admits waste violations’ 36 Injured in chemical plant explosion Second death confirmed after giant chemical blast Fire breaks out At Borealis chemical plant 9 Firefighters hospitalised after ship explosion But how much of this learning causes improvements in attempting to prevent such incidents happening again ? Most JOIFF circulated reports of incidents that occur are familiar. After all major incidents, recommendations are made, sometimes after prolonged investigation, but how many of the recommendations are made readily available, how many of the recommendations are actually implemented and how many are ignored or forgotten over time until another similar incident occurs ?

These are just a few of the incidents that JOIFF reported on during the first half of 2020.

Do you see behind these headlines any incident that you have not read about taking place before in another Country or condition ? Quite apart from the human tragedies in injuries, deaths and homelessness caused by these events, due to the experience and information available to prevent these incidents, in many cases, these are actually an unnecessary cost of loss of property, business continuity, reputational damage and environmental destruction.

Industry needs to ask itself is it doing enough to educate Industry on lessons learnt so that incidents such as these should be reduced and when they occur they can be effectively dealt with.