Page 4028 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 20 September 2011
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Once a premises has a placard quantity of a dangerous substance, whether that be of a single class of dangerous substance or a mixed class of substances, the director-general must be notified of all other dangerous substances on the premises. A register of each dangerous substance must be kept at the premises and be readily accessible. The register must be accompanied by a current safety data sheet for each substance.
ESI was previously located at Winchcombe Court, Mitchell, and had registered these premises with WorkSafe ACT in accordance with this provision. The new premises at Dacre Street in Mitchell have not been registered by ESI in accordance with the requirements of the Dangerous Substances Act and regulations. ESI had been made aware, when registering its previous premises, of its obligation to revise the registration should circumstances such as changes in quantity or location occur.
WorkCover had been made aware by ESI’s architects that the company was planning to relocate its premises. WorkCover formally reminded the architects of their previous advice to ESI that the substances held at any new premises would need to be notified as part of a new registration. No subsequent registration was received.
The primary purpose of registration is to ensure that information is available to emergency services in the case of an incident. To this end, the business is also required to have such information, a manifest, available in a place, kept in a red weatherproof container inside and as close as practicable to the main entrance, that can be readily accessed by emergency services. Initial advice from the Fire Brigade is that emergency services were able to quickly access this manifest information on site on the night of the fire. The exact circumstances surrounding this issue will be covered in the WorkSafe investigation.
Over a period since early 2005, there have been five incidents in which WorkSafe ACT and its predecessor, WorkCover, have been involved with ESI. These incidents involved a small fire, which I mentioned earlier, and an explosion, occurring in 2005 and 2006. A chemical spill also occurred in 2009. All these matters were attended to by WorkSafe ACT. All these incidents occurred at the previous premises of the company. Inspectors from WorkSafe ACT and its predecessor, ACT WorkCover, managed these issues with ESI at the time, issuing notices and requiring improvements in systems and processes in line with the legal requirements.
An outcome of the 2009 visit to the former site was that WorkSafe reviewed the ESI environment, health and safety management plan and noted that the company was, as is appropriate when such complex operations are involved, in the process of reviewing its standard operating procedures and OH&S requirements.
There are three separate investigations of the incident underway or soon to commence. WorkSafe will undertake an investigation of this incident. The Environment Protection Authority will also conduct an investigation under its statutory powers. ACT Policing and the ACT Fire Brigade are already jointly preparing a report for the coroner, who is authorised to investigate fires in the ACT. All these investigations are independent of the government and their terms of reference and conduct are matters for the relevant authorities utilising their statutory powers under legislation.
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