18 YEARS ON: HAVE THE LESSONS OF BUNCEFIELD BEEN FORGOTTEN?

As the industry progresses, we must keep in mind the lessons from Buncefield, says Peter Savage, HSEC lead for HG Storage International. 2023 marks 18 years since the Buncefield explosion. This period effectively marks a whole generation away from the biggest explosion and fire in the UK since World War II. This is a potential generation where adults working in the industry won’t have lived through this incident, seen the television footage, the media coverage, or the devastation on the ground. Safety and operations professionals that followed the investigation and received the UK Health and Safety Executive’s reports will have moved on and maybe retired from the industry. The memories of Buncefield are now reduced to a handful of YouTube videos and Google searches. So how do we make sure the learnings from this devastating industrial incident stay in our collective consciousness as we seek to safely, reliably and responsibly operate our oil and gas facilities? AN INCIDENT UNFOLDS The Buncefield Terminal, located in Hemel Hempstead, UK, about 25 miles north of London, was developed in the 1950s and 1960s as part of a growing industrial area within an expanding town. The...