![]() He remembers his own neighbourhood’s 2007 bitumen spill when huge quantities of heavy oil spewed into the air when a construction crew accidentally punctured a tank. “I’m certainly within that evacuation zone, but I’m more worried about smoke from the fire.” “If you have one of these huge fires, they have to evacuate people from kilometres away,” Huntley said. “There’s all kinds of issues,” said David Huntley, 83, an SFU emeritus physics professor, as he walked with a cane through the Burnaby Conservation Area near Trans Mountain’s facilities.Īs a neighbour just blocks from the tank farm, he said his greatest concern isn’t oil flow but inhaling the chemicals, including benzene, that are used to dilute the thick bitumen to allow it to flow by pipe. The new assertions follow concerns raised by the Burnaby Firefighters Association several years ago, and tby he city’s new mayor and former fire official Mike Hurley, about fire risks to Burnaby residents and a nearby elementary school.įor two local residents StarMetro Vancouver spoke with Tuesday, the seismic concerns have only heightened long-standing fears about the tank farm, even before the proposal to expand the pipeline. “This facility needs to be looked at for the risk of a strong earthquake.” “But it’s these older ones that are a real concern. “I’m sure their new tanks will be build to standard,” said report co-author Dunnet. The Trans Mountain pipeline carries a mix of different fuel types, and if expanded would increase the amount of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands nearly threefold to 890,000 barrels a day to the Westridge Marine Terminal below the company’s tank farm. Tuesday’s report suggested concerns with several of the oldest tanks on the site, which have roofs that float to whatever level they are filled with petroleum products. “Although tank fires and seismic tank incidents worldwide are extremely rare, our prevention and emergency management programs are an integral part of keeping our terminals operating safely.” “In 65 years of operation, we’ve never had a storage tank fire or structural incident with one of our tanks,” a company spokesperson said in an email. Trans Mountain Corp., which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government bought last summer for $4.5 billion from Texas firm Kinder Morgan, said it has conducted thorough reviews of the aging, floating-roof tanks and submitted its findings to the National Energy Board, which later recommended the project proceed. This problem could be addressed, it’s not responsible to not look at it.” “I look at it, in my world, as a low-probability event, but the consequences are enormous the risk is off the scale. “But we do get closer magnitude-6 quakes typically every 30 years or so, and you can get moderate ground motions that would be quite damaging in the Vancouver area. “The actual risk of a big, magnitude-7 earthquake is quite low, but it’s not zero,” said geoscientist John Clague, professor in SFU’s Department of Earth Sciences, in front of the tank facility Tuesday. The pair alleged there are enough potential dangers of an oil breach catching fire and flowing into a 30,000-resident neighbourhood and school to warrant an independent engineering study before the federal government proceeds with the pipeline’s expansion. “It would be a moving fire of astounding magnitude.” “The sloshing after an earthquake would create wave actions against the tank sides, and, if it broke, any spark would ignite it,” retired structural engineer Gordon Dunnet told StarMetro Vancouver on Tuesday. In a report released Tuesday, a Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor and a retired structural engineer sounded the alarm about what they contend are serious flaws of a handful of the facility’s oldest tanks. ![]() Trans Mountain Corp., meanwhile, is rejecting the claims, and stressing the safety measures that will be in place. BURNABY, B.C.-Local residents living downhill from the Trans Mountain oil tank farm on Burnaby Mountain say their fears have escalated after two experts alleged the Crown corporation’s oil storage towers - built 65 years ago - might not withstand an earthquake on B.C.’s coast. ![]()
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