Arkema, the Crosby chemical plant, could have neutralized its organic peroxide but chose not to.

[pnwmom]

In the face of the expected storm, they made a decision to rely on their refrigeration and its back-up instead of destroying their organic peroxide.

In other words, they decided the risk was worth saving some money.


http://www.chron.com/about/article/Chemical-plant-hit-by-Harvey-cannot-prevent-12162255.php

On Wednesday Rowe apologized to the people of Crosby for the threat posed by the facility and thanked emergency management and first responder officials for their help. He said while the company planned for a worst case scenario, and even brought on extra generators to account for any power loss, the magnitude of the storm overwhelmed the company's plan.

"It's impossible to predict with 100 percent confidence a situation like this," said Rowe. "No one anticipated six feet of water."

It would be surprising if Arkema had not considered a scenario like this, said Sam Mannan of Texas A&M University's Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center. Typically, companies can quench organic peroxides in situations like this by combining them with another chemical, eliminating the danger.

"You'll lose the feedstock, but it's safer than letting it go into runaway mode," Mannan said.

[procon]

1. It always about the money... with a wink and a nod from the Texas govt.

The people are not even a factor.

[womanofthehills]

2. Noxious smoke is all the company will admit to

Evacuation suggested for one and a half mile radius, however, many refusing to evacuate. Unbelievable.

[sharedvalues]

3. This is a lie: "No one anticipated six feet of water."

We can guarantee that there were risk managers or facilities managers or operations people or engineers who

calculated the probability of six feet of water.

That quote should be "We estimated the probability of six feet of water, and judged it too low to lose the money we put into our feedstock".

Probability calculation happened at Fukushima: they estimated the size of tsunami that would occur in a 1 in 100 year probability, and designed around that. They should have planned for a 1 in 1000 year probability. But that would be more expensive.
This is all a tradeoff between risk and cost. Small errors in estimating tail risk can have HUGE effects on cost -- and consequences of failure.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Caught the Presser with their Company Mouth piece.

Bottom line was,recapture of Feed Stocks and the Possible delay if stocks were lost. Well they are going up in smoke as we speak. So the real loser in this stupid mistake is the Residents of Beaumont and every one under the toxic cloud.

This Shit is toxic and that is the bottom line. And the Plant chief Bio Chemist should have neutralized every barrel. When people start spitting up blood,it is way past to late.

[Ilsa]

6. And they didn't need to anticipate six feet. They

Knew that considerably less, while sitting on this flat, low-lying floodplain, would create the same problem.

Just curious: Why does this French company have this plant here, anyway?

[pansypoo53219]

5. need a fukashima rule.

due diligence before $.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Yep. Reminds me of Tepco.

[JonLP24]

8. I kept trying to make this point yesterday

Thankfully you provided a link here.

[mopinko]

9. rachel mentioned this the other night.