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Letter: Trans Mountain's Burnaby fire protection isn't up to snuff

Editor: Many of us are extremely worried about the likelihood of a fire at the Burnaby Mountain Trans Mountain oil tanks surrounded by a residential area and a university, and adjacent to an elementary school.
Tank farm
One of the oil tanks at Kinder Morgan's storage facility on Burnaby Mountain.

Editor:
Many of us are extremely worried about the likelihood of a fire at the Burnaby Mountain Trans Mountain oil tanks surrounded by a residential area and a university, and adjacent to an elementary school.

In a recent op-ed, Trans Mountain’s Michael Davies tried to reassure us by stating that their safety measures are industry best practices (Burnaby NOW, Oct. 9). They are not, and we are not reassured. Three years ago, the National Energy Board hired PLC Fire Safety Solutions to do a safety audit, using several industry standards and industry best practices as guides.

Its December 2016 report found several severe deficiencies, including fire pumps, foam system and fire detection equipment that did not meet fire protection standards, and non-compliant procedures for inspecting, testing and maintaining fire systems. There was a lack of performance goals and a lack of identification of fire hazards at the Westridge tanker terminal. The National Building Code requires emergency response within 30 minutes, yet Trans Mountain’s response could be as long as six hours.
A January 2017 letter from Kinder Morgan strongly refuted PLC’s findings, stating that they were unfairly audited and that they should only be judged by legal requirements, not industry best practices. The NEB agreed in part, which is perhaps why the audit report was buried until Svend Robinson unearthed it.
Does Trans Mountain’s existing tank farm fire response now meet industry best practices as claimed? No.

Here are some things we know:
The response time is still six hours for foam spray trucks to arrive from Kamloops.
There is no Mutual Aid Agreement with the Burnaby Fire Department as required.
The proper method of welding steel was not generally known when the nine 1953 tanks were built, and these were not designed for lateral loading; thus they may fail in an earthquake. The welds need to be tested.
Trans Mountain’s assurance of industry best practice fire protection for the Burnaby Mountain tanks is without merit; the planned emergency fire response is totally inadequate and we are very worried.
David Huntley, Gordon Dunnet, John Clague, Karl Perrin and John Clarke, Burnaby