Rain

67 m/s

Around 1:00 a.m. on August 27, 2020, Hurricane Laura made landfall in Cameron (Southwest Louisiana) as a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds reaching 150 miles per hour (67 m/s) and a minimum central pressure of 939 millibars.

On August 24, 2020, in preparation for the hurricane, Bio-Lab began shutting down its Lake Charles operations using its Hurricane Plan. After a Bio-Lab, Inc. executive directed the site management to transport chemicals from the facility, the Bio-Lab team worked to secure trucks to remove TCCA from the facility before Hurricane Laura made landfall.
Bio-Lab successfully transported about 825,000 pounds of TCCA from the Finished Goods Warehouse to the Bio-Lab facility in Conyers, Georgia. However, two additional scheduled trucks never arrived at the facility, leaving over one million pounds of TCCA on-site as the hurricane approached.

On August 25, 2020, nine employees assigned to the Bio-Lab Hurricane Crew. Each crew member had specific job assignments, including securing loose items that could become hazardous during the hurricane (e.g., by being propelled by wind), placing sandbags at entrances to prevent floodwater entry, and other tasks defined in the hurricane plan. To protect the remaining TCCA and other products from potential floodwater, the Hurricane Crew raised the materials above floor level by placing the material on triple-stacked pallets.

The Bio-Lab facility had a fire protection system which included four fire water pumps, including two electric and two diesel pumps that started sequentially. A backup generator was required to provide electrical power to the electric pumps during a power outage.

Overall, Bio-Lab had inadequate preparation for extreme weather as it did not implement industry guidance for extreme weather preparation, failing to learn from the experience of past events (e.g., the 2017 Arkema incident in Crosby, Texas, which occurred after extensive flooding from Category 4 Hurricane Harvey caused). TCCA is not covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard, pertaining to deficiencies in the process hazard analysis action item management system. The regulatory coverage of chemicals with reactive hazards was insufficient (i.e., regulatory coverage gap).

The Bio-Lab experienced serious delays (approximately 5.5 hours) in responding to the TCCA decomposition and fire due to an inadequate and largely non-functional fire protection system and the absence of automated sprinkler systems.

At approximately 9:00 a.m. on August 27, 2020, two Bio-Lab employees (a supervisor and a production operator) entered the Bio-Lab facility to assess the situation or control the TCCA decomposition. There was no electrical power at the facility and a backup generator was required to provide electrical power to the electric fire water pumps. However, the backup emergency generator was not functional and the employee was unfamiliar and not able to use it. One diesel fire water pump was activated at around 11:40 a.m. but the water pressure was inadequate due to a leak in the fire water system piping. Due to these problems, the fire worsened and went beyond the capability of the Bio-Lab responding employees.

At approximately 11:03 a.m., the Lake Charles Fire Department arrived at the Bio-Lab facility. External emergency responders—Specialized Response Solutions (SRS) and Haz Mat Special Services, LLC—also arrived to assist with environmental and hazardous material response.
A consensus that “copious amounts of water would be necessary to saturate the product” to reduce and/or control the decomposition reaction.

The Fire Department attempted to use its equipment to draft water from the Bio-Lab freshwater reservoir and experienced technical difficulties with priming their pump, delaying their efforts to get water to the fire.

Haz Mat Special Services demolished the west wall of Plant 4 and a roof (between the 24-hour Storage and 30-day Warehouse) that were preventing the fire water to access to the decomposing TCCA stored on the ground level. After demolition, they accessed the TCCA and saturated it with water, significantly reducing the visible white cloud emitting from the building.

The incident responders removed a back wall of the Finished Goods Warehouse to spray water inside the area containing the decomposing super sacks. In addition, they removed the damaged or compromised TCCA super sacks from the Finished Goods Warehouse to saturate them with water and extinguish the decomposition. At 7:30 a.m. on August 28, 2020, the vapors emitting from the facility were
considerably reduced and determined to be controlled.

On August 28, 2020, at approximately 2:30 p.m., the incident was sufficiently controlled.

10000

No injuries were reported.

250 M USD

Bio-Lab invested approximately $250 million USD to redesign and completely reconstruct the damaged facility.
The Bio-Lab facility resumed its production operations around March 2023.

The fire involving TCCA was distinguished with water supply in large amounts.

The facility was reconstructed - enhanced safety features were included surpassing those of the damaged facility.

Companies must ensure that emergency response equipment is fully operational and can function when needed during emergencies. Companies should conduct routine evaluations of the fire protection system’s functionality in accordance with industry guidance and NFPA requirements, adequately maintain the equipment, and repair or replace equipment as appropriate in a timely manner.

1. Extreme weather can present serious hazards to facilities that manufacture, process, or store hazardous chemicals. Facilities should evaluate the hazards to processes from extreme weather and implement safeguards to protect from those hazards. The CCPS Monograph Assessment of and Planning for Natural Hazards provides guidance on how to evaluate, risk assess, and protect facilities from natural hazards.

2. It is important to ensure that (1) PHA recommendations are assigned to an appropriate person with a deadline for initial evaluation, (2) the rationale for recommendation modification or rejection is documented, and (3) the status of all action items or recommendations are tracked until completion. Such a process will help ensure that findings and recommendations from PHAs are effectively acted upon.

Companies must ensure that personnel are trained on how to use emergency response equipment.