Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
    • Asset Reliability @ Work
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
    • Reliability Engineering Management DRAFT
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Sanjeev Saraf 1 Comment

1944 Cleveland LNG Incident: Lessons Learnt

1944 Cleveland LNG Incident: Lessons Learnt

An explosion occurred at East Ohio Company’s peak-shaving plant in Cleveland, Ohio on October 20, 1944. 128 people were killed and 225 injured as a result of the incident.

East Ohio Company built a LNG peak-shaving facility in Cleveland in 1941 to augment the gas supply. In 1943, a cylindrical storage tank was added to increase the LNG storage capacity. On October 20, 1944 this cylindrical LNG storage tank failed releasing 1.1 million gallons of LNG. The liquid overflowed the partial dike designed to contain piping spills and ignited.  Many of the fatalities were in an adjacent utility company building on the same site.  Liquid also flowed into city sewers and caused local explosions in a number of locations some distance from the site.  It is estimated that the damage from the pool fire itself extended about 0.5 miles around the failed tank.  A second spherical tank failed after 20 minutes of fire exposure increasing the duration of the accident.

Root Causes and Lessons Learned

Stainless steel was scarce during World War II and so the cylindrical tank was made up from another alloy – 3.5 % nickel steel. The tank was placed in service and eventually failed catastrophically upon contact with cryogenic LNG. The 3.5 % nickel steel is no longer used for cryogenic applications. Instead 9% nickel steel, which does not embrittle at low temperatures, is used. Further, it was evident that LNG storage tanks needed to be provided with full capacity diking and that tanks should be spaced to prevent failure from exposure to nearby fire.

Filed Under: Articles, on Risk & Safety, Operational Risk Process Safety

« What Does it Mean to be ‘Safe’?
The Most Commonly Underused CMMS Features »

Comments

  1. JD Solomon says

    March 25, 2022 at 12:41 PM

    Short and to the point article!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Photo of Sanjeev SarafArticles by Sanjeev Saraf
in the Operational Risk, Process Safety article series

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Posts

  • Terrorism Risk Insurance Act Exclusions: Gray Coverage Areas
  • Why Total Productive Maintenance Is The Answer To Reliability-Centered Culture
  • 17 Powerful Insights on Effective Communication Using FINESSE
  • Surprising Insights from Simple Run Charts
  • Risk is Round

© 2023 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy

This site uses cookies to give you a better experience, analyze site traffic, and gain insight to products or offers that may interest you. By continuing, you consent to the use of cookies. Learn how we use cookies, how they work, and how to set your browser preferences by reading our Cookies Policy.