Importance of Safety Management and Safety Culture for Storage with Explosion Risk: Lesson Learnt from the Beirut Disaster

Abstract

There are many places storing combustible materials with explosion risk at residential or urban areas. Different explosions occurred all around the world thought the years. The latest case for a big explosion in the middle of a big modern town is the 2020 ammonium nitrate port explosion in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. More people are worrying about places with explosion risk, such as warehouse for combustibles with explosion risk, oil tanks, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum refilling stations in downtown under tall building, explosion hazards of using hydrogen as clean fuel, etc. It takes a long time to upgrade the fire protection systems. Safety management and safety culture in those high-risk areas of explosion in big fires are very important. The recent AN explosion is a warning signal to enhance fire safety. This case is reviewed in this study as a way for looking forward in handling that kind of explosion hazard. New ways for research are proposed, including modeling experiments and numerical simulations.