What Went Wrong?

Preface

In 1968, after many years' experience in plant operations, I was appointed safety adviser to the heavy organic chemicals division (later the petrochemicals division) of Imperial Chemical Industries. My appointment followed a number of serious fires in the 1960s, and therefore I was mainly concerned with process hazards rather than those of a mechanical nature. Today I would be called a process safety adviser.

One of my tasks was to pass on to design and operating staff details of accidents that had occurred and the lessons that should be learned. This book contains a selection of the reports I collected from many different companies, as well as many later reports. Although most have been published before, they were scattered among many ...