I think the best training we had in fire fighting was on a submarine. We put that theory into practice one night when my roommate was cooking corn dogs and left the oil unwatched. He came back to the kitchen and called away a fire. We had dudes flying in and put the thing out. The fire department came and looked at the kitchen and said what the fuck. With all the damage usually this house would be burned to the ground.
They don't teach it anymore to when you fully open a valve. You back it off two turns. That valve heats up and you have it back seated. You're in for a long ass day
The problem is they make us plant fire fighters. They send these dudes to TEEKs for a week and they come back thinking they know how to fight a real fire.
Then you go into another place and you say yo bro. Here's our findings they say oh so we still have .001 until we meet requirements. I as the project manager always say. We are not here to say what you should do or what you can do but can you wait 5 hours until my team gets on an airplane
The inspection side makes you worry. Plant managers and turn around managers hate you. They are already behind. Because all turnarounds run behind. We showed up to a place in Corpus one year. We smart pigged their pipes and oh boy. They should have been retired years ago. We did the heads up call to the plant contact and he was like no fucking way That next morning we were about to do our close out meeting and the Director said hey fuck this. I'm so goddamn mad right now. Why won't any one of you tell me why we could have died.
I was an inspector (smart pigging) then I became a operator. Some of the heavy hitters like Exxon and Chevron would rather eat a 10 day shut down than end up on the national news. Others love to roll the dice. But I think the entire industry has fallen in love with opportunity crude and getting caught with punting turnarounds. Oil is expensive let's defer so we can maximize profit. Oh shit gas is too cheap. We don't have it in our budget. Stuff breaks. The scary parts these days are going to be vessel ruptures. Most of the giant tanks and vessels are 50-60 years old. You can say you inspected it but you can't really inspect all of it. It takes that little flaw to cause a big hole.
Seeing things like this is why I am so glad I got out of oil and gas. These companies preach safety but profit is the driver. You get a phone call from the business unit downtown and all of a sudden people are doing some weird ass things.
They are propping up First Republic until Friday afternoon. Then they are going to let it completely meltdown and come up with another lever to pull over the weekend
Happened about 15 years ago in Pasadena/clear lake area. 3 Mexican dudes robbed the guys neighbors. Neighbor called police. Killed the guy by shooting him in the back while he tried running with a TV. Grand jury did not indict. Sucks that he died but try not robbing people