Referans Bilgileri

Risk of hazardous materials release following an earthquake

Kathleen J. Tierney, Richard C. Anderson

1990

It is generally thought that a major earthquake in an industrialized, densely populated area of the U. S. could lead to the release of hazardous chemicals. Since a large post-earthquake release has the potential for posing a life-safety threat to community residents, causing environmental damage and creating other hazards and emergencies, such as fires and explosions, attention to this problem is warranted.

The management of hazardous materials releases has received increasing attention in recent years, particularly in the areas of new legislation and community preparedness efforts. However, while coping with post-earthquake releases is likely to present many challenges and difficulties in addition to those that are present during everyday, nondisaster times, relatively little attention has been paid by policymakers and planners to the special problems associated with these types of accidents.

The volume of hazardous chemicals that are manufactured, stored, and transported in Greater Los Angeles is very high. The Los Angeles Standard Metropolitan Statistical area has the second-highest number and geographic concentration of chemical facilities in the United States, after the Greater New York-New Jersey area (Congressional Research Service, 1985). Los Angeles County is one of only two counties in the U. S. with two hundred or more chemical plants (the other is Cook County, Illinois) (Cheok, Kaiser, and Parry, 1985). Within the Los Angeles area, the Port and its immediate environs have the highest concentration of facilities handling large quantities of hazardous chemicals. Given its close proximity to the Newport-Inglewood Fault and other faults, chemical hazards associated with the Port of Los Angeles deserve close attention.

This paper contains three general sections. First, based on interviews conducted in the Los Angeles area, the paper discusses how the risk of earthquake-generated hazardous materials releases is perceived by emergency managers in both the public sector and the chemical process industries.

Second, the paper briefly reviews research on failures and spills that have occurred in U. S. and foreign earthquakes in vessels and facilities comparable to those at the Port of Los Angeles. Third, the paper presents an outline of a methodology for assessing, on a regional basis, the risk and effects of earthquake-generated releases and discusses applying this method to the Port of Los Angeles.

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