![]() In a study on the group’s website, Gordon Dunnett writes: “KMC’s (Kinder Morgan, prior owner) structural engineer chose to increase the Burnaby Mountain Tank Farm hazardous material storage capacity while ignoring External Floating Roof Tank failures in seven earthquakes between 19 and five serious fires ignited during these earthquakes." The Concerned Professional Engineers of BC is worried, too. ![]() Bowcock says the proposed tank farm expansion would increase the risk of community impacts by 70 per cent. The report warns that the proposed expansion of the tank farm will make it very difficult for his department to successfully fight any fire that starts within its proposed and crowded new layout of storage tanks. and heat discharge to areas outside the facility." Burnaby fire chief, Chris Bowcock, wrote a report in 2015 warning that "insufficient firefighting deployment positions increases the likelihood of a multiple tank fire. Gibson’s concerns led to her committing civil disobedience at the gates to the tank farm in 2018 (the same series of civil disobedience actions at which I was arrested).Ĭhris Bowcock, chief of the Burnaby fire department, has weighed in on the project, and his 2015 report is dire. “I live on Capitol Hill,” she says, “and we get all the winds from Burnaby Mountain.” A member of BROKE, Burnaby Residents Opposing Kinder Morgan Expansion, Gibson says she used to love to hike the trails on Burnaby Mountain, but became alarmed when she started having nose bleeds, which she suspects may have been caused by gases leaking from the tank farm. Like Hart, author, actor and activist Elan Gibson says she lives within the 5.2-kilometre “hazard zone” surrounding the tank farm. Living so close to a possible explosion, she wryly notes, “creates a certain unease.” While her home is a 20-minute walk from the tank farm, she says it is well within the “hazard zone,” a phrase used by several Burnaby Mountain residents concerned about fire among overcrowded fuel tanks and how it could reach into their neighborhood. Roslyn Hart has lived near Burnaby Mountain for 40 years. there is an increased risk to SFU from the (Trans Mountain Expansion Project).” As a 2016 study conducted for Simon Fraser University by PGL Environmental Consultants concludes: “. He worries that escape on the only road off the mountain would be blocked by fire and the plume of toxins and smoke it would create. Perrin worries that a fire at the tank farm could strand him and his wife, who lives with asthma and could experience life-threatening complications in a smoky environment, on the mountaintop along with more than 30,000 students, faculty, staff and other UniverCity residents. When Perrin and his wife Ann moved in, he says, “We didn’t have a clue the tank farm existed.” Retired speech language pathologist Karl Perrin lives one kilometre up slope from the tank farm in UniverCity, the planned community that borders the campus. Boilovers have occurred around the world in tank farms like the one on Burnaby Mountain. A boilover in a petroleum storage tank occurs when the contents have been set on fire and then burn down until the water accumulated at the bottom of the tank is turned to steam, creating a massive explosion. The threat of a catastrophic boilover event occurring at the tank farm, sending a column of flaming oil and toxic chemicals high into the air and down onto nearby homes and schools is causing sleepless nights on the mountain. (Full disclosure: I have been actively involved in opposing this project, and was arrested for civil disobedience at the tank farm gates in 2018.)īut for folks on Burnaby Mountain, the issue is also personal. The increased tanker traffic through Vancouver Harbour demanded by the expanded pipeline will increase the risk of marine accidents, spilling toxic petroleum products into the harbour. The proposed expansion will mean a disastrous increase in greenhouse gas emissions, a death blow to hopes for reconciliation between Indigenous nations and Canada, and an end to hopes of Canada hitting our Paris Accord emission reduction targets. As faithful Canada's National Observer readers will know, there are many good reasons to oppose the expansion of this pipeline and its tank farm.
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