Fire Safety Concerns on Residential Areas Located Adjacent to Oil Tanks

Abstract

Hong Kong is a dense urban city with very limited usable area.  Flammable liquid storage tanks and LPG storage have to be placed near to the residential areas, highways and flight paths.  It is estimated that oil tank fire can go up to 700 MW when there is any accident in fuel storage areas. The heat flux emitted to the near residential estate would be as high as 17 kWm^-2.  Such big fire would not only affect health and safety of the citizen, but also disrupt the operation of the whole city for a very long time.  Therefore, hazard assessment of oil tank fire should not only include several small fire scenarios.  Proper fire safety measures and provisions for big fires should be developed.  These issues will be discussed in this paper with simple empirical expression derived from fire dynamics.  Advanced technologies, such as fire robots, are recommended to facilitate fighting against big fires.