Conference Program

This course looks at the historical lessons learned from major incidents in the NYC. This session will ultimately provide insight into what the stakeholders from the first response community want to know when they arrive on scene. The ability to communicate the hazards will enable them to develop the response tactics necessary to mitigate the impact of your incident and ensure that everyone goes home safe. The session will also cover the personnel and logistical considerations that will ensure a positive outcome to your incident. Remember you can’t do it alone!

This course will look at the collaborative efforts that should be employed by the utilities and the members of the law enforcement community. It will serve to dispel some of the myths and focus on what is plausible in terms of keeping the infrastructure safe through training, drill facility design and security initiatives.

Rarely does a utility provide training to the members of the first response community. Usually the only time training is offered is when it is followed by suffering. A large scale incident tends to flush these issues out. Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by appointing personnel to design a training program without considering stakeholder needs. These programs are usually designed to give an engineering overview of how the facility works. When this program is rolled out to first responders it is met with “lemon face”. This is the painful look from the fire department when an engineer is explaining the phase angle concept rather than the basic hazards and response tactics necessary to keep them safe. Learn how to avoid lemon face by attending this session from key personnel who have designed training and drills for the full gamut of the first response community.

Fire investigations, in residential and commercial buildings, require documentation of the electrical systems. Fire investigators routinely rely on information obtained from the power company as part of this documentation process. This presentation will discuss the some of the requirements in NFPA 921 and 1033, the type of information fire investigators are likely to request, and how providing this information may be beneficial to the power company.

Our society relies on the steady, reliable, and safe availability of electricity and natural gas to power our homes and businesses. However as our infrastructure ages we are observing an increasing number of fire and explosion events as a result of infrastructure failures. A recent study indicated that in Washington, DC alone a survey found nearly 6,000 methane leaks in the 1,500 miles of roadway. Enough gas was observed to be leaking to power 7 homes on a daily basis and 12 sampling locations had concentrations that were flammable. This and other data indicates that the rate of infrastructure failure may be increasing and that incident frequency may increase as well. The cities with the largest portion of aging infrastructure are also those with the some of the highest populations, namely Boston, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. These cities also have some of the largest quantities of “unaccounted” for gas. In addition while the quantity of cast iron piping is slowly decreasing as it is replaced by utilities, PHMSA states that incidents involving the cast iron piping account for more than 11% of incidents resulting in injuries or deaths. In this presentation we discuss a summary of prior incidents including recent events in California, New York, Ohio, Arizona, and Indiana as well as elsewhere. We discuss the potential to use fire and explosion modeling tools to evaluate potential high risk areas and the consequences that could occur as a result of a leak and subsequent ignition. By examining pipe sizing, pressure, material, and age an analysis can be done to establish areas that require additional focus and computational fluid dynamics modeling (CFD) can be used to evaluate the potential consequences of an incident on the community. By systematically indexing the risk and consequences corrective actions can be taken to efficiently implemented changes to the system. In addition the use of the tools can be highly effective in evaluating post incident reconstructions as well as designing potential protection systems.

This presentation focuses on the challenges associated with implementing and maintaining adequate fire protection on aging generation assets. Of particular interest will be: Incorporating emerging fire protection technologies into existing steam and combustion turbines and their associated support systems; Establishing a team approach to inspection, testing and maintenance; And applying NFPA 850, Factory Mutual Data Sheets 7-101 and 7-79 criteria to achieve Highly Protected Risk Status.

Whether it is back-up batteries in our substations or batteries used for peak load shaving we must consider how we will manage a bad day before it arrives. This course will provide participants with the data obtained from field testing in terms of effective suppression agents, spacial separation and best practices for design. Testing was done on the following battery types:

• Lead Acid
• Lithium Ion
• Sodium Sulfur
• Sodium Nickel Chloride
• Vanadiium Redox