GAS CYLINDER STORAGE
Imagine for a minute you are a plumber. You work independently and have been hired as a contractor on a construction site building a commercial office space. You’ve been there a while, become friendly with the other crew and one morning you, and some other contractors walk into the storeroom just like you have every other day.
But what you don’t know, is inside that storeroom 80 gas cylinders are standing upright without chains or gas bottle cages, and they don’t have safety caps placed over their valves. They all contain a non-flammable non-toxic gas called argonite and are waiting to be installed into the building’s fire protection system. Somehow one of them falls over.
Almost immediately the cylinder neck is sheared off and argonite (under high pressure) shoots out, propelling the cylinder into another one, knocking it over too. And then another. And another. Incredibly 66 cylinders begin to literally fly about the storeroom: they are each more than 2 metres high, weigh more than 140kg and are flying at speeds of more than 170 miles per hour.
You die in that storeroom from injuries after being hit by an airborne cylinder. You never know that 6 of your colleagues and friends are also seriously injured, or the WHS inspector’s final report states that ‘the incident could have been avoided had there been effective planning, management, monitoring and coordination”.
The plumber in the above example was a real person named Adam Johnston who died in 2008 at a workplace in the UK. This incident is a terrible reminder of the very real dangers of gas cylinders and why storing them safely at your workplace is of critical importance. Could this incident have happened where you work?
We’ve written this blog to help you understand the risks associated with gas cylinders, and then how to store them safely so you comply with Australian WHS legislation. Read on, because if your workplace (even if it’s a BBQ stall cooking sausages outside Bunnings) uses or contains any type of gas or LPG cylinder (empty or full) you have obligations under the law to minimise the risk of those cylinders causing someone to get hurt.
