Naval Fuel tank leak in Hawaii 7

[Alistair_Heaton]

If they are as bad as some of the UK bunkers I don't blame the locals wanting them empty.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...-to-drain-fuel-tanks-that-contaminated-water/

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Seems they are now closing.

https://gcaptain.com/shutdown-worlds-largest-underground-bunker-fuel-tanks/

 

[1503-44]

250MM Gal. Nowhere near the largest. Actually puny. I worked on 5 storage depots for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The largest is about 15X the size of that. All of them including most support facilities, minimum 50-100m underground.
No website link. (No. Not in TX)

I also worked on the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's really big. That is the world's largest crude only storage reserve with 30.5B gal (115.5MM m3) (726 MM BBLS).

https://www.energy.gov/fecm/strategic-petroleum-reserve-9

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[LittleInch]

I was wondering how it compared to those caverns...

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[1503-44]

This one holds 6.5E6 m3 (1.7B galUS) (41MM BBLS) and is about 1/2 of the largest.
When you stand 30m above the floor at one end of a cavern and you see the guys down the far end digging, you know what it feels like to be an ant.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[JedClampett]

But as my father (a WWII vet) said, times were different in those days. Things got done, some legal, some illegal.
Any vessel will leak eventually if not maintained.
The story is fascinating:

https://youtu.be/lIz8IstwnWU

 

[1503-44]

Hawaii was not a state then. They're still doing illegal stuff in Puerto Rico. It's (nearly??) bankrupt now.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[JohnRBaker]

It appears that the Navy has identified what caused that fuel leak that contaminated the water in and around Pearl Harbor military facilities. As Pogo said, “WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.” :

Human Error Reportedly Poisoned Hawaii's Water At Pearl Harbor, Navy Says

A U.S. Navy investigation looked at how fuel from a tank farm leaked into a water well.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hawa...ation-pearl-harbor_n_62be662fe4b00a9334e617ec

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

Yet another instance of failure in Navy leadership and training. One wonders whether the US Navy is as overly vaunted as the Russian Army is, given these continually exposed failures.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[dik]

and

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...tiple-errors-poisoned-Pearl-Harbor-water.html

So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[Electronbelt]

This is allegedly leaked video of the actual leak as it was happening:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEGohRlLrSA[/url]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WIBzTfErxw[/url]

The associated news article can be found here:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/watch-fuel-spewed-full-blast-into-red-hill-tunnel-in-november/[/url]

 

[TugboatEng]

That's a plastic pipe. It's leaking water.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yea, I caught the same thing:

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[TugboatEng]

Terrible way to mount a hydrant, though.

 

[Electronbelt]

That's a plastic pipe. It's leaking water.

Would this not be the "fire suppression line" that was contaminated on May 6th during the initial fuel transfer mishap and then later damaged on Nov. 20th resulting in the contaminated contents being released and flushed into the drainage system/out into public?

I only skimmed through the initial findings report some time ago and that was my understanding of the general sequence of events.

 

[TugboatEng]

It does have a hydrant but is white PVC ever acceptable for a fire suppression line? I know CPVC has some approvals but I've never seen white.

 

[Electronbelt]

It does have a hydrant but is white PVC ever acceptable for a fire suppression line? I know CPVC has some approvals but I've never seen white.

I believe the short answer is 'no'. This being the military however it appears the answer is 'sorta'.

Also I would suggest reading the a fore mentioned article starting at the heading labeled "Cracked PVC Pipe Illustrates Contracting Failure". It appears to have quite a bit of detail on this very subject including the fact that this line was not supposed to be constructed from PVC.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/watch-fuel-spewed-full-blast-into-red-hill-tunnel-in-november/[/url]

 

[TugboatEng]

Having operated a tugboat built in Hawaii... I may have some prejudice.

But I'm going to argue that wasn't fuel coming from the pipe. Maybe there was fuel in the pipe trunk and the water caused it to be displaced into the drain system. There may have been 20k gallons of contaminated water? Not 20k gallons of fuel.

A local highrise residential building just had a failure of the fire main which caused evacuation of 1000 residents. Once a main breaks the results are often catastrophic regardless of the fluid.

 

[Electronbelt]

But I'm going to argue that wasn't fuel coming from the pipe. Maybe there was fuel in the pipe trunk and the water caused it to be displaced into the drain system. There may have been 20k gallons of contaminated water? Not 20k gallons of fuel.

With all due respect TugboatEng, I feel like you may not have read through all the reports or articles and I believe you may be misunderstanding the sequence of events.

Based on the information that has been released to the public thus far, I've put together some cliff notes regarding the events leading up to the current situation.

Keeping in mind this is my interpretation of the information provided in the reports and my interpretation may very well be incorrect.

May 6th:
[ul]
[li]- A operational mistake leads to an over-pressure event in a fuel transfer line causing joint separation in two different locations.[/li]
[li]- As a result, thousands of gallons of fuel is dumped into the service tunnel.[/li]
[li]- The fuel is 'cleaned' from the tunnel.[/li]
[li]- At this point there has been NO environmental release.[/li]
[/ul]
Note: The Red Hill tunnels are equipment with fire suppression systems that circulate water and suppression foam in the event of a fire. This system also includes provisions for the collection and re-cycling of said contents after they have been released. I think you see where this is going...
[ul]
[li]- As the tunnel began filling up with fuel, the fire suppression system activated itself and began priming the re-circulation/recovery system.[/li]
[li]- Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the pumps drafted 17,000 gallons of fuel out of the tunnel and pumped it into the fire suppression system.[/li]
[li]- Due to a number of operational and investigative issues (and possibly outright lying), the leak is logged as being only several hundred gallons when in fact it was almost 20,000, with 17,000 of this having 'disappeared' into the fire suppression system.[/li]
[/ul]
May 8th:
[ul]
[li]- Still not realizing the fire suppression system had vacuumed up all this fuel, a contractor is brought in to make sure the fire suppression system was not incidentally damaged or that the pumps had activated during the fuel release. The contractor signs off that the pumps did not activate and that the system gets a passing inspection.[/li]
[li]- At this point in time it is unofficial knowledge that a vastly larger amount of fuel was released than the official log states (they know how much left the tank and how much they swept up), but there is no further investigation into the huge discrepancy.[/li]
[/ul]

Nov 20th:
[ul]
[li]- A worker riding the service tram in the tunnel strikes a hydrant protruding from the bottom of a trunk line in the fire suppression system.[/li]
[li]- As a result, the hydrant drop is damaged and the trunk line (which is normally not charged) begins dumping the 'missing' 17,000 gallons of fuel back into the service tunnel a second time.[/li]
[li]- Due to a vast number of operational/personal/emergency response issues as well as confusion over the line contents and actual leak source, response to this leak is a cluster of communication breakdowns, coordination failures and straight up chaos.[/li]
[li]- Over the span of a week, the poorly executed cleanup allows fuel to enter the local water table through means varying from seepage through the concrete structure to literally allowing it to enter storm drains and flush into the environment.[/li]
[/ul]


All in all, it is believed roughly 5,000 gallons (of the initial 20,000 from May 6th) was lost as a result of this second leak, with a very large majority of that volume making it directly into the water table.

Also to note as for how the tunnel tram could hit the hydrant in the first place - it is believed the normally dry PVC line was sagging under the weight of the fuel. The report also notes that this particular PVC line was supposed to be steel/iron, but the contractor that installed it used PVC because it was less expensive. The powers-that-be determined it would be too costly to re-do the system so it was signed off on as-is.

Throughout this event there has been several high-ranking demotions and of course the public announcement of the full decommissioning of the facility.

Anyway that would be the cliff notes as I interpret the report(s). Hopefully it is at least crudely accurate and helps others understand the situation a little better.

Edit: Spelling...