Page 47 - SAPREF 50 year

Close shaves
SAPREF has seen a few close shaves in its 50 years. A combination of skill, courage and pure luck has kept real disaster at bay.
Shaken to the core
One Saturday in 1981 a sulphur tank which
was directly opposite the workshop building exploded. John Thomson remembers the incident: “It felt like many of our hearts exploded too, as it was so incredibly loud. The shock waves that followed were the worst. The blast blew out most of the windows in the main office block, and whatever was on the desks was now on the floor in smaller pieces. In the main workshops the doors and windows were ripped from their hinges and the mess was unbelievable. I can recall a fellow worker was blown off his chair in the workshop and broke his arm. The roof of the sulphur tank took off and flew over the units, and luckily it landed in the road alongside the Alkylation unit.”
Alkylation plant fire of 1998:
Going bananas
John Thomson, a SAPREF veteran of more than 39 years, got the call in the early hours of the morning. “This was by far the biggest fire that I
had seen in the refinery. It all started because of a blocked flare line. When we got to the main gate all you could see was the big flames and smoke for Africa and hear a lot of noise.
It was a challenge as when some of the fires were extinguished we had the problem with free gas in the area so we re-lit the gas lines and concentrated on the oil side first and then came back to the gas. The fire took eight hours to extinguish. It had done a lot of damage to the plant — C6501, the tallest column, was beginning to take on the shape of a banana.
FCCU Merox plant fire of
1999: A real scorcher
Eddie Poll Jonker, the former Fire Chief, remembers: “I got the call at 6:15 one Saturday morning. Racing to the refinery
I could see the flames and smoke from a distance, and I knew this was a big baby. There was a major pressure fire on the FCCU Merox plant. Some 40 operators were involved in fire-fighting. Flames covered everything and the heat was scorching. Fuel was still
When a sulphur tank exploded in 1981, its roof took off and landed safely on a road about 100 metres away.
feeding the fire. Who was going to isolate the fuel source? I was as scared as everyone else, but they were looking to the Fire Chief to do something. It was the loneliest moment of
my life. However, with the assistance of two courageous operators, we committed ourselves to a fire attack and extinguished the fire within minutes.”
Dune fire: Help from above
At about 4pm on 12 November 2002, Emergency Services personnel spotted smoke billowing in
a very strong wind on the top of the adjacent dune. The municipal fire department were called and the air force base put on stand-by.
A helicopter was called. As sparks and embers could now be seen falling around the refinery, car owners were instructed to move their cars from the car park. Then the wind changed direction and blew the fire and smoke to the east (seaward) side of the dune. The helicopter lifted 19 bucket-loads of water from the firewater dam and dropped them on the fire, containing it within two hours. It was suspected that squatters living in the dune forest had caused the fire.
HDS4: A failure of note
On 28 October 2006, a hydrogen line on the HDS4 (hydro desulphurising unit) failed, causing a fire. Operations and on-site emergency services responded immediately, the unit was shut down and the fire extinguished. A project team was assembled to rebuild the unit. It eventually came back on-line five months later.
SAPREF’s pacesetter firecrew training programmes are closely aligned to real scenarios.
COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE
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