Gas explosion warns against compliance myths

After the recent gas plant explosion in Moomba, SA, it would be tragic if the warnings in Lessons from Longford are not heard.

In his brief and highly-readable book Andrew Hopkins clearly identifies the issues involved in the explosion at Esso’s Longford No.2 gas plant on 25 September 1998, which killed two men and left Victoria without gas for two weeks.

Rather than looking for root causes in the plant with its operators (as Esso did), Hopkins insightfully traces the disaster’s causes to cultural and systemic problems within Esso.

Hopkins pays special attention to Esso’s attitude to its safety system. As is often the case, safety compliance was more concerned with measuring lost time incidents and having the right policies, standards and procedures on a shelf than with developing a culture committed to safety.

This analysis and Hopkins’ practical suggestions for how to remedy problems make the book well worth its cover price.

Apparently Esso could have learned from Hopkins’ 1999 book Managing Major Hazards: The Lessons of the Moura Mine Disaster, another brief and very readable examination of the 1996 disaster which killed 11 men.

A Victorian trade union official was quoted as saying that you could almost substitute ‘Esso Longford’ for ‘BHP Moura’ in the book because the same string of system failures which happened at Moura happened at Longford.

Both books contain vital lessons.