DANGEROUS PROPYLENE GAS LEAK AT THE JESENICE RAILWAY STATION

Abstract

Between 10.29 p.m. of 16 August and 2.13 p.m. of 19 August an incident occurred at the Jesenice railway station – a leakage of the tank wagon filled with dangerous and highly flammable propylene gas with the UN number: 1077. The action, or inaction, of some media caused nervousness and tension, while the public coldly observed the situation. It all started with the arrival of the train to the border railway station in Dobrova, where employees of the Slovenian Railways overlooked the leakage of the propylene gas from one of the tanks. The train composition was examined also by other Slovenian border authorities, but they found nothing unusual. Finally the leakage was discovered by an employee of the Austrian Railways, who checked the train before its entry to Austria. Via the Kranj Regional Notification Center the railway station personnel activated all appropriate rescue services, which isolated the train and removed the leaking tank-wagon. The problem was that Slovenia does not have a single tank-wagon for the transportation of this type of gas. Neither does it have experts able to replace the broken valve. For this reason, both the tank to pump the propylene into as well as the experts who arrived at Jesenice from Pančevo and Zagreb, which took a lot of took time. Analysis of this event pointed out the accompanying problems and proposed their solutions.