Happy New Year thank you for tuning in, here's to a great 2023!!! This weeks Outro Song in Full: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-k8GMl6aQC-g.html Also any suggestions for future explosions?? Let me know!!
Since you mentioned the transport museum, I wondered if you had taken the Glasgow Central Railway Station tour? It goes under the station to an abandoned platform from the Victorian era. I'm not in the best of shape and haven't done it myself, but I have heard it's excellent. If you haven't done it, then list it under things to do if/when you visit Glasgow again!
As a plastics expert, for my career, those hot autoclavers (ovens) to heat coated plastics are something you need to be constantly monitoring. They take a lot of energy and run hot nearly 24/7. Safety needs to be a primary concern, which sounds elementary and obvious, but it isn't often enough when you also consider that plastic pre-polymers can be toxic before cured into their final forms as well meaning they could create deadly airborne toxins. At my facility, we have our own personalized rebreathers and non-production personnel are banned from approximately 30% of the entire facility to avoid dangerous areas altogether.
As a safety supplier I like the sounds of this, do you guys use 3M PAPR units or do you have SCBAs? Sounds almost similar to the nuclear boiler production facility we supply in my city, we've sold close to 300 PAPR units to their fabricators
Also the ovens make me think of glass production facilities and the massive startup and shutdown times required for those beasts, always sounded like a nightmare
God I'm just rambling now, but my dad worked for a plastics compounder and they received a mislabeled railcar and accidentally produced mustard gas, I'm assuming that doesn't happen as often now. Their rail manager was canned shortly following that incident I believe lol
@@maxhill7065lol sorry I know this isn't the case but I'm imagining you just rubbing your hands together like "hmmm YES SAFETY oh I have these very nice respirators for sale, yes please think of safety and buy, thank you" 😇🤣 but really, it's so important you can't put a dollar amount on people's lives and health
@@maxhill7065 I don't know, but I do know our autoclaves are one-offs, custom builds, not sure if they use 3M. I'm in sales and corporate training (for the sales staff) so I'm a material expert not a production expert.
I'm Glaswegian and remember that day quite clearly. It was my day off work and I was planning a wander to the botanic gardens from the city centre but decided against it to go straight home. I literally would have walked past the Stockline plastics factory at roughly the time it exploded if I had decided to walk to the west end.
My fiancée’s grandfather was one of the first amongst the rubble trying to help survivors, he was walking home from the nearby shops to his home around the corner from the original site. Still amazes me to this day as you’d never expect it from him being the most placid, laid back man on the planet ❤
The head company did acknowledge their mistakes and treated victims and victims families with an impressive amount of respect and dignity! They even raised a memorial on site, with no hesitations or legal wranglings! I salute them for this! While there are fatal accidents in Scotland just like everywhere else, the Scottish really do take care of their own after the fact. You should have mentioned this. 🙂
Lol are you from their PR department? I find it bizarre that you call this disaster a "mistake" and you're so excited about something the company should do at the very least.
@@bunstructors8591 The company made mistakes which caused the disaster. So the use of Mistake is correct. He's not calling the disaster a mistake, he's calling what happened to cause it one. Which is was.
Was 8 years old and living in Clydebank (then as now) about 7-8 miles away when this happened, so I have little memory of it from the time. I am aware of the scars it left behind, particularly in that area of the city. The first major disaster that occurred in Glasgow that I vividly remember is the Clutha helicopter crash on 29th November 2013, particularly as I was attending college near to where the aforementioned pub was at the time and had walked past it on my way home that afternoon. Was surreal to say the least to see it all over every news channel the following morning, the images of the mangled tail of the helicopter sticking from the pub's roof still send a chill up my back even now.
I'll look that up. Catastrophic events close to us always stay with us. I remember a line in a book that said, a tornado outside our window that kills a dozen touches us more than an earthquake on the other side of the world that kills thousands.
I kinda remember the Stockline incident but I was at school at the time it happened so wouldn't have heard about it until I came home (if I heard about it at all until the news on TV at dinnertime), but I definitely remember the Clutha one.
As someone who works in gas, I'm shocked to not have heard anything said about any odorant of any kind. Propane and natural gas in America have to have mercaptan added to highlight if there are any gas leaks, as both gasses are odorless. Mercaptan smells like a mix of foot cheese and swamp ass and is incredibly powerful, even small leaks stand out. A leak of that size would've been noticeable from 2 kilometers away or more. Not to mention, no pressure testing done on industrial piping is always a bad plan. Lots of negligence in this one
That explains why after desasters people say they smell gas in America! Idk if they have any smell additives here (Germany), but I do know we have a gas alarm at home which alerts to any gas leaks and from my education it's always been presented as an invisible killer. But my education is average citizen who's never given it a second thought.
@@littleloner1159 Easy way to check is to briefly turn on and off a gas stove and not have it light, and take a whiff. It won't harm you, but if the odorant is in there you'll know what the smell is in the future. Knowing what you're smelling can be really important to be able to keep yourself safe in the future
"foot Cheese and swamp ass". As someone who 40 years worked for a company whose building had a gas leak at least every 6 months, that is exactly what mercaptan smells like. I always said it smelled like a very bad fact. Either way, there is no way you can miss when a gas leak is detected.
@@littleloner1159it's practically harmless if you're not in an enclosed space, that's why if you ever suspect it in your house or wherever, open windows or if you feel woozy at all go straight outside until the fire department can come and test
@Plainly Difficult Thank you John. One of a tiny number of channels that I respond to as soon as the videos are uploaded. Another Glasgow based accident would be the 2014 bin lorry crash. Relatively small in terms of scale, but given how ubiquitous bin lorries are I'm sure everyone would find it both interesting and alarming. Take care ✌️
@Castleview Good call. I live in Clarkston, and pass one of the two memorials* every day. Also, apparently one of the victims lived in the house now owned by my parents. My parents bought the house in 1983, and our neighbour, who was a good age at the time, (having lived there for decades) told us, though I've never been inclined to verify this. *There's one at the train station entrance and another at Clarkston Halls.
It is indeed surprising when companies are held accountable for their actions, especially when it comes to cases of negligence. It is all too common for companies to escape responsibility for their actions, and it is a positive step when they are held accountable and forced to take responsibility for their mistakes.
Yeah I really wouldn't call 200k being held accountable. Now if it were 200k per worker killed and injured maybe, but even that would still not be enough.
200k per worker death would be a joke, lifetime earnings, loss of life, family impact etc should be 2mill plus per person as comp then fines on top in the 50 mill or 5 years total post tax profits range for causing death by negligence then huge levies for increased more robust yearly inspections at all other sites which will reduce to normal levels after 10 years of good management.
I always enjoy your videos. The research and and your story telling really are top notch. One little detail that I want to point out is that of all the creators I watch regularly, you are the only one to perfectly set up the mid-roll ad breaks in your videos. Some people get close but your videos are spot on every time. Never getting a word chopped off, the screen always fades and has a transition. Your productions are impeccable. Thanks for being awesome and happy new year.
I'm not in the UK and this is the first I've heard of the Stockline disaster. I'm surprised the gas supply companies weren't also found liable for not reporting to an outside regulatory body the inability to inspect the entire pipework/ refusing to supply gas until rectified. Would that not be expected in the UK?
The gas company responsibility ends at the tank they put the lpg into. Its not a permanent gas connection, but filled occasionally by truck. The issues here are original installation of underground galvanised pipe (compliant at the time of installation) Subsequent yard work, hurrying the pipe even deeper. But far and away most significant is completely inadequate inspection. All commercial gas installations require anual certification. Someone dropped the ball, that pipe wouldn't pass regs now.
I heard alot about Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland growing up as a child. My Gran was born there in the early 1930s before she moved over to USA in the 1950s. She'd talk about Hopehill Road and her life growing up in and around Glasgow. I found this video fascinating due to my connection to the area through her. I just wish we hadn't lost her in 2007 because I am sure she'd have lots more tidbits of info to share
as a gasfitter, i'd like to say that as you referenced earlier in the story the pipe wasn't galvanizeed. it's not allowed in gas piping. the way the pipe was put down at the start was correct. it should have been tarred and wrapped, as steel line was in the day when it was covered in dirt. nowadays they use polyethylene plastic underground.
@@EatingMachine23 reacts with trace sulphur in gas. and the threads aren't protected, making them prone to corrosion. sulphur is removed enough nowadays to not be a problem with reaction, allowing even copper to be used. . at 1 time it couldn't be used either.
Went through Wikipedia's list of explosions (yeah that's a thing) last night and was amazed to see how many there were. Some I wouldn't put on the list, but... Plenty of material for 2023. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with pipeline accidents however, in terms of a buried pipeline that nobody knew was either ther or damaged, it ruptured and went off
I recall this tragedy very well unfortunately. It was the ultimate test for all of the attending emergency services. I remember the Chief Fire Officer Brian Sweeney of the then Strathclyde Fire Brigade reassuring the public that everyone would be found regardless if they had survived or not. The service had only recently taken delivery of urban search and rescue units and - thanks to assistance from other UK fire brigades - everyone was found eventually. R.I.P to everyone that died.
Mines rescue and voluntary Search and rescue groups were involved over the two day search for survivors .the area looked like an earthquake had occurred .
As the slightly uneducated father of a really clever engineer who scrambles for understanding via this and many other engineering related channels (a plainly difficult endeavour) I hope you and yours have a great new year. $0.02
Likewise the Nobel explosives van explosion in Fengate, Peterborough the next year (1989-03-22). I heard that when I was at the old passport office the other side of town.
One possible aggravating circumstance here involves the gasline buried in the ground. As most here know, you can't smell natural gas or propane, so they add an odorant, mercaptan in the US, I'm not sure what's used in the UK. In one case here in the US, a cracked underground gas line outside the building led to an explosion. The gas traveled through the easiest to pass through ground, that which had been turned up when the line was emplaced, and leached into the building. The soil acted as a filter and held back the mercaptan, so the leaking gas wasn't able to be smelled in the building that ended up exploding. I wonder if something similar could have happened here, eliminating the warning time you might otherwise have had?
I feel like not enough emphasis in the criminal and civil cases was placed on the regulators who allowed this to happen. Relying on businesses to inspect and self govern is a recipe for disaster. Any gas regulatory body should have been severely penalized for allowing this plant to continue with such unsafe pipework.
I’m from Scotland, about 4/5 hours North and West of Glasgow. I was pregnant with my 3rd kid when this happened and I remember it well….husband is a paramedic and I was a nurse. Watching the recovery effort and hoping they pulled more folk out that would survive but knowing that crush injuries are grim and once folk are released after being trapped for a while the toxins that build up are suddenly let loose and can kill someone who was talking to you a few minutes earlier….it’s heartbreaking. What impresses me about living in Scotland and the UK is that our emergency services are excellent when dealing with mass casualty scenarios and you’ll find that nearly every civilian that happens to be in the area when something happens will do their best to help people who’re having the worst day of their life. When I read about folk from the USA who are reluctant to help for fear of being sued makes me pretty angry. The USA has the most screwed-up healthcare system in the world and cares more about making massive profits than caring for the vulnerable and it’s so wrong. This incident in 2004 is a prime example of Scotland looking after it’s people. I have a chronic medical condition which means I have to take lots of medication and have to go for hospital checks twice a year….my prescription is free and so is my mri scan etc.
Thank you John for your dedication and attention to detail in all your productions. I have really enjoyed them this whole year. I hope you have a great New Year and enjoy some free time and that your weather improves as it makes me sad whenever you say what your weather is....rain....chill....gloom. Cheers! >^*^
5:01 I get this. Used to work for a company called Morgan Advanced Materials, but they still referred to their former name: Certech. They used both names interchangeably. I can imagine this causing some confusion.
I used to work in a bakery that had the propane line under the parking lot. It was at least thirty years old with no way to check it. We had multiple leaks from the aging stoves and water heater, with people fainting, getting a fireball to the face, and me personally getting carbon monoxide poisoning from working over a leaking stove.
The Stockline Plastic Disaster" video covers a catastrophic event that occurred in 2004 when an explosion at the Stockline Plastics factory in Glasgow, Scotland, killed nine people and injured 33 others. The video likely details the causes, the investigation that followed, and the impact on safety regulations in industrial workplaces. It serves as a stark reminder of the importance of stringent safety measures and the tragic consequences of neglecting them.
In the US direct burial of gas lines below an enclosed area is prohibited by building codes. There is a code compliant workaround. Instead of direct burial the gas line is routed through an outer pipe (PVC is acceptable) and the outer pipe is vented to the atmosphere external to the building. Thus, if a leak should develop in the supply line any gas escapes externally to the enclosure.
@@reddwarfer999 There's a lot of different chemicals involved in plastic manufacturing, many of which are significantly more dangerous than said plastic. It's not uncommon for raw materials to have a higher burning temperature than the end product. I used to work in medical manufacturing, specifically I worked on electroplating small metal parts. The parts themselves weren't inherently dangerous, but we all had a very thorough briefing on handling the chemicals because one of them, KFe, would produce cyanide gas when combined with any acid of which we worked with several. Different details, obviously, but the point is that the end product isn't always the highest risk material in a manufacturing facility. Of course it's totally possible you were joking in which case don't mind me, I take things way too seriously lmao
@@SparkleFoxMutt This was a plastic moulding factory that manufactured products from plastic beads, it wasn't manufacturing the actual plastic itself. Raw materials that go into plastics (like ethylene) may well burn hotter than the plastic itsef but this isn't what happened here.
Your channel is brilliant keep it up. Few you should look into from glasgow is Cheapside Street whisky bond fire 1960. Kilbirnie Street fire 1972. Clutha bar helicopter crash 2013. Glasgow bin lorry crash 2014. Sure this will be loads more. Happy new year when it cones
I experienced a moment of nerd-vana when you interrupted your introduction to rate Glasgow's transportation museum (do visit the one in Spencer, North Carolina if you ever travel in the eastern US).
You should do a video on the i40 bridge near-disaster in Memphis, TN in the US. Luckily no one got hurt, but it cost the economy millions with the bridge being closed and the investigation as to how no one noticed the crack on inspections was interesting.
Great video, just one tiny thing, it’s not the Crown Prosecution Service that prosecuted them, in Scotland it’s the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal’s Service.
I once worked in construction and one time my company subcontracted to another company that made SUCH a huge deal of safety, layering everything across the entire job site with incredibly restrictive rules and regulations, like forcing us to keep one hand on the railing while climbing a 2-foot set of steps, under VERY close supervision. Yes, for climbing 2 feet of steps into the lunch tent. We spent very little time working due to massive delays imposed by procedures that demonstrated primarily that they thought we should all be wrapped in cotton and treated as small children. I observed that most of the work being done was related to safety procedures, and little to no actual construction was happening. I'm pretty sure they tried so hard to avoid getting sued for accidents that they wound up getting sued for breach of contract instead.
Aha! I knew it! That guy at 4:41 who was once an Underground train driver, an oil rig engineer, a tug boat captain, and a slew of other jobs that resulted in disaster had a hand in this!!!
I think the second gas supplier should have been concerned about the lack of visual access to the delivery pipe and installed a new one, no doubt cost would have determined this outcome. If a new tank is installed then a thorough check of the delivery network should have been undertaken, this highlights a common theme in all John's videos, cost versus safety.
Surprised a full pressure check was not done. this involves raising the pressure to several times the operating pressure using dry nitrogen, not flamable or corrosive.
@@howardsimpson489 More than five years passed between the installation of the new tank and the explosion. It's quite plausible that the pipe was not leaking when tested, making it irrelevant whether it was tested at operating pressure or several times higher. In both cases the pressure would be very low relative to the strength of a good pipe. As long as there were no actual holes, even a severely corroded and weakened pipe would still pass the test.
My dad installs and services commercial, and residential furnaces. I had to bring him something once and he was actually redoing a gas line that the buried in cement. Going up to the building. The frost we get here would have eventually shift the cement snapped the copper pipe and filling the church with natural gas.
I thought i already subbed to this channel but apparently I didnt and just have been binge watching your channel and liking videos 😂 so here goes a sub for ya 😁 love your voice thank you for your hard work & the content is fantastic.
I was working on Great Western road when this occurred. The blast was powerful enough to almost shake loose the windows of the store I was working in and I was several streets away. Terrible incident.
Great video. One concern, the LPG in the atmosphere would just be propane gas. A leak could occur with the liquid, but this would go into the atmosphere as propane gas over time. The gas is what is particularly hazardous, more so than any liquid pool.
About that "buried underground pipes" being "not galvanised" - while I'm 100% sure how it is made in UK, those steel plumbing pipes that comes zinc-coated are typically not "galvanised" but "hot dipped" - meaning, they are dipped in molten zinc, and the zinc coat is order(s) of magnitude thicker, and thus way more resistant. But at any rate it won't be of any benefit if the pipe is buried "just like that" underground, as zinc is a VERY reactive amphoteric metal - so reactive that it can be dissolved by boiling water, and the only thing that prevents it going away from steel sections and pipes "in open air" in a matter of weeks or months is the very fact they are in open air - and thus they can get dry between rains or snowfalls - and the chemical phenomenon called passivation. A piece of zinc buried in wet soil will corrode completely in matter of weeks, months at most, so "coated" or "no coated" makes no difference (especially in case of "galvanised" pipes, where the protective zinc coat is just couple of microns thick - as opposed to tenths of millimetre for hot-dipped coat). Proper MOISTURE insulation (like painting those pipes with asphalt and wrapping them in asphalt-soaked "bandage") should be done here (or anything else of that sort). Also, a side note - I've always found that Bahasa Melayu word "letrik", meaning "electricity", kinda amusing - and today I learned about "leccy"... : )
A year later, ICL pled guilty to the charges. Here in the USA, a company would have pled not guilty and kept the case dragged out in court either long enough for all the survivors to die or force them into a settlement due to the victims all going into bankruptcy.
Shaking my head at the memories-the unpasteurized fruit juice one, the hamburger one, the time the Rajneeshis tried to food-poison an entire town in Oregon. Absolutely wild.
@@pvanpelt1 Or the 1975 contamination of in-flight meals that sickened over half the people aboard a 747 and only luck prevented the pilots being affected.
Thank you as always john for your thorough yet gentle studies of human fallibilty. Someday I woukd like ro understand the psychology rhar makes us curious about stories of disaster, although as a classics major I suppose I already have my answer in Aristotle's discussion of catharsis (the old git had to be right about *something*). The fact that this happened in Scotland, where they're usually pretty solid engineers, just goes to show nobody's perfect (see also the Tay bridge, although that was at least partly due to early engineering ignorance rather than outright negligence).
I always wonder why the “fines” these companies pay aren’t earmarked to compensate the victims? Corporate does bad, government levies fines, public gets squat.
