Study trip to Fredericia (DK)

We started our trip to Fredericia seminar in a small snow storm and our flight was delayed about 90 minutes at the start. But after all we managed to get to Copenhagen airport and from there to Fredericia by train.

Our host in Fredericia was the Trekantbrand which is responsible for the Fire and Rescue service in an area of 3449 km² and almost 360.000 inhabitants.

Trekantbrand Fire and Rescue service gave us interesting lectures about the major incident in Port of Fredericia. February 2016 a large silo containing fertilizer (Urea Ammonium Nitrate) collapsed causing a large accident. The silo was originally a petrol tank and petrol is much lighter than UAN. Petrol density is 0,8kg/litre and UAN is 1,3kg/litre. The company overfilled the tank and the disaster was ready…

The executive officer alarmed several units to the scene from all over the Trekantbrand area. Due to the large amount of units it became hard to handle all of them.

At first the accident was only a chemical accident but in short period of time fire fighters noticed smoke coming from the middle of the silos, and for some reason, which is still unknown, the palm oil started burning. The fire was very hot and caused damages to six other silos. Huge amount of palm oil ended up to sea and still, almost two years after the accident, palm oil comes to shore.

The collapse of the UAN silo caused flooding of the UAN because the collapsing silo broke the safety pool surrounding the silo area. The UAN spread all over the area and washed away 60 new cars from the nearby car store. Most of the UAN flushed into the sea causing environmental problems to the area. Also the nearby waste water plant suffered severely from the accident. Problems there started about an hour after the accident occurred.

The accident is still affecting the environment and the environmental procedures will be going on for many years.

Text and photos: Miikka Toivonen