two case studies
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case_studies.docxCase Studies
Students should read the scenarios below and respond in the form of an essay, which should consist of several paragraphs and appropriate priority or task lists. Responses should be supported fully and completely. A well-thought-out response can be accomplished in 300-500 words (one or two pages, double spaced). Any published material used to support a response should be cited per the APA style guidelines.
Unit III Case Study
The Scenario: You are an EH&S professional returning home from your plant on a summer Friday afternoon at about 4 p.m. You have just picked up some materials from a nearby building supply store for a weekend backyard project (cement, sand, wood, concrete blocks, lumber, etc.). You are about one mile outside of the main population zone of your small town, and you come upon an accident scene in which a placarded tanker truck is turned on its side in a ditch about 20-25 feet off the two-lane road. There is no sign of fire and no sign of the driver from your vantage point inside your truck. The only sign you can see from your vantage point is a Dangerous When Wet placard with a Class 8 label code and a UN 1836 on an orange panel. What might this chemical be? You think you can make out an NFPA diamond with a 0 at 12 o'clock; a 2 at 3 o'clock; a 4 at 9 o'clock; and a slashed W at 6 o'clock. You take out the small binoculars from your truck and scan the scene. There seems to be a thin, small volume of dripping liquid (red to yellow color) coming from a valve on the tanker.
There is an agricultural field directly next to the incident site. A large irrigation unit is spraying the fields, but the extent of the spray seems to end 20-25 yards away from the overturned truck. Slight, but steady winds are blowing about 5-8 mph across the scene towards town.
Your small community has a fire department, but it does not have a hazardous material squad attached to it. Your chemical plant (3 shift operation, bleach, pool chemicals, and household products, 15 miles away) does have a hazardous material team that you trained and is under your direction. You do have your cell phone and an emergency response guidebook.
Questions:
1. How should you proceed? Discuss the actions you should take.
2. What, if any, restraints should you exercise?
3. What advice would you give to any other individuals or drivers coming upon the scene?
4. What would you say to the next responders coming on the scene?
Unit VI Case Study
The Scenario: You are back at your plant the Monday after the Dangerous When Wet leaking tanker incident happened, and you are telling your fellow HazMat Team Coordinator how you handled the situation. Before he has a chance to offer his opinion, a call comes in over your radio that a forklift has punctured a 55 gallon drum at the door between the oxidizer storage area and the production department. There is a spill, and no one is injured; however, the production employee does not know what was spilled. You make an immediate page to all emergency response team members in the area, and then you head out the door to the scene with your fellow HazMat Team Coordinator (the production department chief engineer). While en
route to the scene, you call the plant manager and apprise her of what you know and that you will report back as soon as you have more information. The incident command center can either be the production office or the conference room near the plant manager's office. In this case, your first choice is the production office.
The storage area building has multiple storage bays for oxidizers, flammables, acids, and bases. When you arrive near the scene, you find the punctured drum on its side against a pallet of three other drums and a very small fuming cloud of vapor developing from the area, but you cannot tell its exact point of origin. It turns out that the drums are just inside the storage area building. You can see that the drums on the pallet have flammable labels. The fourth flammable drum has been knocked off the pallet and is also lying on its side next to the punctured drum. The punctured drum has not been identified at this point – it is a strong oxidizer, strong acid, or strong base raw material.
Questions:
1. How do you proceed?
2. What information are you after, how do you gather it, and what instructions do you provide for your team?
3. What hazardous situations are you and your team facing? If you need to, you can differentiate these situations
depending on the punctured drum being a strong oxidizer, strong acid, or strong base. Develop a brief priority list
and a brief action list for what you should do.
4. What, if any, restraints should you exercise?
5. What advice would you give to any other individuals coming upon the scene?
6. Do you call for an evacuation of any, or all, of the plant itself? There are approximately 180 employees currently
on site during this first shift – located in different areas around the plant (i.e., administrative offices, shipping and receiving, raw material bulk chemical storage, finished product bulk chemical storage, production operations, packaging operations, labs, and production/engineering offices).
APA Guidelines
