GAS EXPLOSION AT THE GAS-FILLING STATION IN THE SETTLEMENT OF CHAGODA. CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

Burning gases are used in everyday life and in manufacturing. However, it should be considered, that along with beneficial properties burning gases represent a large fire hazard and may lead to the most serious emergency situations. The most common are propane-butane and natural gas. Propane-butane is 1.6 times heavier than air, natural gas is 1.8 times lighter, and it brings certain features to mechanism of forming explosive cloud during leakage. The most common cause of explosions is human factor, when neglect of basic fire safety requirements leads to the most serious impact. An example of such an accident was the explosion at a gas-filling station in Chagoda (Vologodskiy region). During the explosion the administrative building along with a garage box was completely destroyed. Two people were injured, one died. The reason of emergency was gas leakage occurred through the flange at one of the pipelines of transportable gas filling tank trucks, that was places in enclosed space. Based on the analysis of the emergency situation was developed a possible scenario of an accident, defined the approximate pressure of explosion inside the garage box, that was 9.2 kPa, as well as the flow rate of combustion products in the doorway that led to the death and amounted to 296 m
s. Thus the acceleration that got the man was about 80.5 m
s. In conclusion was noted, that considerable difficulties appear while analyzing the area of the flame, taking into account its difficult structure. That's why methods of analyzing different parameters of gas mixtures' explosion require further development and improvement of the system.