BLEVE (pronounced blevvy) is an acronym for “boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion”. It is a type of explosion that can occur when a vessel containing a pressurized liquid such as LPG is ruptured.
Physicist and engineer Dr Evan Bydder believes a Bleve is likely to have occurred on April 5 at the Icepak Tamahere coolstores, which was using LPG as a refrigerant. Reviewing the circumstances of the fatal fire he advised here that it would be “quite unacceptable to permit the re-establishment of coolstore facilities on the present Icepak Tamahere site, regardless of the type of refrigerant gases that may be used initially.”
What does a Bleve look like?
Bleves are among the most devastating of accidents likely in chemical process industry, records this paper in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Bleve’s are accompanied by “highly destructive blast waves and missiles. In most situations there is also a fireball or a toxic gas cloud. The damaging effect of Bleves is reflected in the fact that the 80-odd major Bleves that have occurred between 1940 and 2005 have claimed over a 1000 lives and have injured over 10,000 persons besides harming property worth billions of dollars. Release of toxic chemicals like chlorine and phosgene from Bleves have damaged large chunks of areas surrounding the Bleve site.
Well, having seen the explosion and the video they are so alike.
Maybe this should be sent to Icepak and the council so they have some understanding of what happened