By Naonobu Nishimoto
From September 26, a succession of crude oil storage tank fires broke out and oil leaked in 30 out of the 105 tanks at the Hokkaido Tomakomai Idemitsu Kosan Co. Oil Refinery. Those disasters were triggered by the Tokachioki earthquake on the same day. A fire broke out at a naphtha storage tank on September 28 causing the floating lid, which covers the tank, to collapse and all of the oil to burn. This is the country's first known case of a "uncontained oil fire." This disaster was caused by Idemitsu Kousan's optimistic view of the fire and the Idemitsu oil refinery was subject to investigation due to their lack of disaster prevention measures.
Idemitsu oil refinery has finished removing the remaining oil from the tanks which burned, and the police finished their investigation of the scene. Idemitsu is the biggest oil company in Japan, and people felt cheated by this accident. The security of the oil supply is important for us, especially in the winter season when the demand for oil is high. We hope that this accident, as Idemitsu says, will not influence the supply of oil in Hokkaido.
After this accident, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency inspected the accident scene and announced positive steps toward reviewing the disaster prevention plan of the petrochemical complex. But it was too late, because one month had passed after the disaster. It shows that the Government's handling of the problem was clearly too late, which is disappointing.
The first thing to do is to review the quantitative increase of foam extinguishing agent. This time Idemitsu used about 250,000 liters of foam extinguisher, which was 1.3 times more than Japan produces in a year. The next thing to do is to amend the disaster prevention law overlooking petrochemical complexes and the fire fighting law. In the meantime, Idemitsu made a new committee to reform the security control systemwhich includes the warning of any accident to government agencies. Also, Idemitsu introduced two US made world largest foam cannons, which has a capacity of 30,000 liters of water and throws it as high as 150 meters, which are ten times more and several times higher respectively than normal chemical fire engines. It had actual results in America of extinguishing a fire in a 100,000 ton class gasoline tank in 65 minutes.
The good thing is that the damage was limited and did not endanger anyone. But it will be difficult for Idemitsu to recover people's faith in them. However, Idemeitsu has begun to take slow but firm steps to regain people's trust again.
Even in this era of developed technology, large accidents like Idemitsu's case will happen. But we must remember there are hard workers who check to prevent against accidents and who do their best when they happen. We are irritated when we see people often hold those workers on the scene responsible. It is not they, but the company that should take responsibility for the accident, because it is impossible for the field workers to foresee that any such accidents will occur. We hope that Idemitsu analyzes the cause of the accident and checks all their oil refinery plants scattered throughout Japan, and try hard to give us a sincere countermeasures. We should also observe Idemitsu's new countermeasures as well as those of the other companies try to keep securities, and see to it that it will never happen again.