On August 12, 1985, in Fairfax County, Virginia, a cargo tank loaded with 5,000 gallons of corrosive hazardous waste from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard In Portsmouth, Virginia, leaked its cargo while en route to a disposal facility in Deepwater, New Jersey. The 17-year-old cargo tank had recently received corrosion damage repairs, however, no technical examinations were performed on the cargo tank at that time to determine the severity of corrosion damage to the shell or the welds. The cargo tank subsequently failed while transporting its fifth load of hazardous waste after the repairs were made. Examination of the cargo tank after the incident disclosed a 12-inch crack immediately adjacent to a corroded vertical weld In the cargo tank's rear head; the vertical weld in the rear head had not been repaired. A 4-mile stretch of Interstate 95 was closed to traffic for about 9 hours, and about 600 persons were evacuated from an area within a half-mile radius of the cargo tank. Local emergency response personnel initially experienced difficulties when attempting to call the waste generator to determine the concentration of the hazardous materials contained in the waste solution and to determine the threats presented to public safety; a telephone number listed on the shipping paper for the waste generator was called about 5:20 p.m., but no one answered the phone. This investigation report focuses on the Inadequacies in the following Department of Transportation requirements: for inspecting, retesting, and repairing cargo tanks used to transport hazardous materials; for measuring and evaluating the severity of corrosion damage to cargo tanks; for establishing measurable qualification standards for persons inspecting and testing.cargo tanks; for establishing measurable standards for repairing cargo tanks which involve corrosion damage or weld defects; for establishing measurable qualification standards for persons performing repairs on cargo tanks involving corrosion damage and weld defects- and for providing information on shipping papers to Inform emergency response personnel about the concentration and hazards of the material transported. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting