It’s hard to miss the constellation of giant white domed fuel tanks lining a section of I-40 in Greensboro. Carolina Curious question-asker Bill Ameen started wondering about them while driving back from Winston-Salem one day.
“Since there's so much there, is it a safety hazard?” he asked.
The tanks are part of Colonial Pipeline’s Greensboro tank farm — the company’s largest in the country. The facility supplies gasoline, diesel, and other fuels to the entire East Coast. At least 75 tanks are housed on the property. And in 2010, one caught fire.
A 911 caller described the scene in audio included in a WFMY report.
“We're driving down I-40, and we just saw lightning strike one of the Colonial Pipeline big things, and it caught fire,” the caller said. “It almost, like, exploded.”
The tank contained 840,000 gallons of fuel when the strike hit. Fire is one of the main safety concerns related to tank farms. Brian Vickery, with the Greensboro Fire Department, says crews responded immediately.
“We extinguished that fire, and we were actually the first municipality to be able to extinguish a tank fire that size,” he says.
Vickery says the department had been preparing for an incident like that for years, and what they learned that night made their training program more robust. They now conduct two full-scale drills on site annually. Crews also participate in monthly prep sessions and keep a close eye on weather around the facility.
“We're sitting there watching where those lightning strikes occur,” he says. “And that's kind of part of our situational awareness for our personnel.
Tank fires are relatively rare, though. One report estimated between 15 and 20 major incidents are reported each year worldwide. And none have occurred in Greensboro since 2010.
Federal rules require companies to protect against ignition from static electricity, lightning and stray currents. Vickery says Colonial also has systems designed to contain fuel if something does go wrong.
“They have a very sophisticated system for controlling any runoff, damming and diking. Each tank is actually in a containment or a container itself. So if something happens, all the product will be held inside that containment area.”
We relayed all this back to question-asker Bill Ameen:
“That's pretty reassuring that the fire department is in on the security and they know what's going on with it,” he said. “And with the current situation with diesel and all that worldwide, it's important to know that it is being protected too.”
Colonial Pipeline declined an interview request for this story. In a statement, the company said more information about the safety of its system is available on its website.