USA - Rick Thornberry, President of The Code Consortium, Inc., is a professional fire protection engineer and nationally known consultant.

Uniform Fire Code - Many years of discussion and evaluation have finally resulted in a model fire code formally adopting recognition of protected tank technology.

At December 7-11, 1997, hearingsconducted in Tucson, Arizona, the Uniform Fire Code Committee pain-stakingly transferred the sections of Appendix II-F/Protected Tanks into the appropriate locations in the body of the Uniform Fire Code (sections 5200 and 7900). The impact of this process is that the Appendix II-F was previously considered a discretionary document.

From a layman’s standpoint, the Uniform Fire Code did not specifically provide for fuel storage other than underground storage tanks. When environmental regulations were discovering the effects of leaking underground storage tanks and therefore suggesting that containment be placed aboveground, the first concern of the fire protection industry was how the tanks would perform in the path of an exposure fire.

Many regulatory authorities remembered the August 12, 1959, AST disaster in which six firefighters and two civilians (personnel at the service station in question) were killed. As you might recall, these tanks were singlewall bare steel tanks which each held 21,000 gallons of petroleum. A spill by the tanker truck, an inadvertent ignition by the service station personnel, and ultimately, the failure of venting devices on the bulk tanks, resulted in ruptures of end walls. These ruptures made one of the tanks behave like a missile, propelling itself into the firefighters who had responded to the conflagration. The deaths of the six firefighters underscored a long-standing fear that a fire which finds petroleum escalates into a new level of emergency altogether.

Therefore, contrary to marketplace representations, aboveground storage tanks have not been allowed on as liberal a basis as has been suggested in trade advertising. UL Standard 142 has been in existence since 1922 but has been revised to reflect safety features to its present level (Seventh Edition). Until the mid-1980’s UL-142 technology which is traditionally described as bare steel tanks was permitted on an exception basis and, in some cases, only in the configuration which constituted a “special enclosure.” As previously stated, underground storage tanks were approved; aboveground storage tanks were permitted as an exception to the underground storage tank on a site-by-site basis.

ConVault, Inc. introduced its vaulted technology in the mid-1980’s and was considered to have met the intent of the “special enclosure” description and began to receive favorable permitting in various jurisdictions. The promulgation of UL Standard 2085 and ULC CAN/ORD 142.16 for Protected Tanks such as ConVault ASTs with performance-testing criteria for furnace fire, hose stream, vehicle impact, and projectile resistance, further elevated the comfort level of the fire protection industry. Widespread permitting for ConVault ASTs began. As you may recall, the current acceptance includes the recognition that over 20,000 ConVault ASTs remain in service today without a single system failure - a factor the fire protection industry monitors.

It is still key to understand that the transfer of Appendix II-F from the discretionary section to the body of the Uniform Fire Code is a landmark decision. The code work is not finished; we have simply observed and participated in a key stage in the development process. The adoption of the International Fire Code still looms as the next great challenge for Protected tank technology. It must be our ConVault commitment to cooperate with the regulatory community and clientele in order to insure that we do not lose sight of our objectives.

ConVault, Inc. has challenged each ConVault representative to devote 20% of his/her annual time to maintaining the connections with the regulatory community and the fire protection industry in particular. There is no better way to insure that we are serving the public’s interest than to constantly update the front-line authorities with such developments as the “venting by form-of-construction” listing, the recognition by Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. and Underwrites Laboratories of Canada that our nonmetallic secondary containment is equivalent to doublewall steel, our methods of production-testing conducted in each plant, which may be considered as evidence to waive expensive onsite testing at the time of installation (a hidden cost to owner/operators, if required).

These developments were also endorsed by the SAFE Trade Association of which Suzanne Steele of ULC Standards Department recently advised ConVault, Inc. of hearings involving AST technology from S-601 (bare steel tanks) to S-655 (protected tanks) to convene on February 24 and 25, 1998, at ULC corporate offices in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. Written comments are due no later than January 31, 1998.

ULC Tank Committee Schedules Meetings in 1998

ConVault, Inc. will be represented at the hearings by Paul McWhorter, Vice President of Marketing/Regulatory Liaison.

Canadian ConVault licensees and owner/operators are encouraged to submit their input/comments to David Harris via FAX at (209) 632-4711.