Media reports that the barge spill has shut down the port. If this is for many days how quickly will the RR routes supplying ships and businesses plug up ?
Current media reports say the the channel should be reopened “Monday,” so it may be open now. Apparently some 80 ships got hung up by the two day shutdown.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/24/us-usa-oil-spill-idUSBREA2M01H20140324
Not so fast. The spill needs to be cleaned up before resumption can occur.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=9478791
The place where this happened is just off the Texas City dike, the mouth of the ship channel in Galveston Bay.
There are specific lanes for barges and ships, with ships in the middle lane and barges using the outer lanes.
The barge or tow was supposed to wait till the ship had passed them, then cut across, for some reason they didn’t, and like trains, big ships can’t stop, and they ran up on the barge.
No real plug up for the railroads, in fact, business will slow some, till all the ships at anchor in Bolivar Roads can get in.
The big issue is steel, autos and petrochemicals, Houston is the major port of call for Volkswagen/Audi, their US distribution center is here, and POH is the number 1 entry for steel and of all things, coffee.
Right now, it looks like sometime this evening to have the major lanes open.
For those who are interested, there is a website that shows the location of ships around the world in real time. The area outside of Houston is always crowded.
Today it is a mess: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/home
John Timm
The water in Houston is full of black stuff, and now so is the air:
Thank you for the update from da’ swamp. All the moving around of ethanol and petrochemicals around you is simply amazing to watch. I’m sure the heavy manufacturers would be howling in full voice if the steel supply got too tight.
Right now limited barge traffic is being allowed, the channel should be open to big ships by tonight.
The big fire is in a upscale trendy part of town, just west of downtown, it is a bedroom community for the downtown folks….mostly mid 20s to early 1900 bungalow and craftsman homes mixed with a lot of the older businesses, big bucks burning up there.
Rent for a small apartment in that part of town starts at $1500.00 a month.
I can promise you the ethanol folks are having a fit right now, we run two dedicated trains to Greensport daily for storage and shipping, and our receiving yard is getting full.
It appears the building was in the most vulnerable stage of construction - all that wooden framing up and no sheetrock in place yet.
I noticed in several of the videos (I get updates from several fire sites) that the exit stairwells were holding up nicely, though.
As an example of what the firefighters were up against - the “rule of thumb” for needed fire flow is square footage divided by 3. Per floor. A 100’ x 100’ four story building would need upwards of 13,000 gallons of water per minute to extinguish it.
With JIT supply chains - things grind to halt quickly - and there is nowhere to hold the backlog!
Nice run of the channel at night, the ship leaves from the turning basin Westway terminal, right across the street from where I work, and transits the channel all the way to Bolivar Roads, the Gulf of Mexico.
Most of the industries you see are refineries or petrochemical plants.
As of 10pm, the channel is open for all ships.
In case anyone missed it, be sure to click on the fourth video down about the rescue.
It’s been a while since I was involved with this kind of thing, and I don’t have any references handy, but I thought the max. required flow per building codes - which is different from a working firefighter’s rule of thumb, granted - was on the order of 2,000 GPM, for most low-rise residential and commercial construction (not high-rise residential buildings, industries, etc.).
13,333 GPM is about 1,780 cu. ft. per minute (CFM), or 29.7 cu. ft. per sec. (CFS). The 1,780 cu. ft. per minute is about 0.045 ft. of water per minute on each of those 4 floors (divide by 4 x 100 ft. x 100 ft.), which isn’t as deep as the 13,333 GPM volume rate seems like.
- Paul North.
Poor risk management by not phasing it better to install the sheetrock shortly after the framing on each floor or section was completed. Also, no firewalls between every couple of units ?!? I know Houston has little or no zoning ordinances - but no building codes or fire prevention codes - local or state - either ?
The lack of on-site owner-contractor safety management - fire prevention, permits and protection required for ‘hot work’, handy extinguishers, etc. - speaks for itself. Bet that contractor’s ‘builder’s risk’ premiums go through the roof, and the insurance company gets much more aggressive about inspections and requiring corrections as a condition to continued coverage . . . [:-^]
- Paul North.
As long as we are staying off-topic for the moment, I’m truly amazed at the number of apartment buildings here in Texas that do not have automatic sprinklers. The same goes for homes with high square footage.
John Timm
Is it wise to install sheetrock before it can be protected from wet weather?
We had a fire in Salt Lake City recently, which also involved a frame apartment building under construction. One of the workers engaged in the construction set the fire; why, I have seen no explanation.
In 1979, the Woodway Square Apartments caught fire, which rapidly spread to adjacent apartment complexes due a very brisk wind and most of the apartments in that part of town having wood shake shingles, in total, 10 city blocks were destroyed in a 7 alarm fire.
A change in the city building code outlawed wood shingle roofs inside the city limits, and required all new apartments building to have firewalls in the attic spaces, along with sprinkler systems.
The refineries and chemical plants along the ship channel have partnered with the Houston Fire Department in a mutual service pact, if a fire happens in any of the refineries, (which have their own fire response teams) all the refineries will send men and equipment, along with the HFD, and if the HFD request it, the refineries will send their men and equipment to help the HFD……this has happened once that I clearly remember, a chlorine tank truck was involved in an accident on IH 610 loop, in east Houston, the HFD at that time had never dealt with that particular product, and requested the Joint Response team to assist.
The solution was to mist/spray the ruptured pressure tank to keep the gas cloud down, and contain the run off till the chlorine finished escaping.
That crap ate holes in the rebar in the overpass where the accident happened, requiring the overpass to be demolished and replaced!
For those interested, the CBS evening news will have film clips and interview with the worker rescued from the balcony in the big fire yesterday.
This derailment is one of the reasons the FRA requires a sequenceal list for all hazmat shipments.
The HFD had a basic understanding of what they were fighting, but no the specifics….at about 1:30 into the film, the bleve lets go, the guy on the ladder takes it face on hard.
Boston back bay area reports a major fire with two fire fighters KIA.
Seriously, they don’t pay these guys enough!
If that’s the firefighter I think it is - he should have been issued wings. IIRC he got blown off another ladder at another, similar incident…
Bad scene in Boston. Apparently things went sour very early in the incident - I’ve seen reports that the first “mayday” call was made less than eight minutes in.