Was the extent of this damage the result of poor equipment spacing?

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Explosion at Sonatrach's Skikda LNG Export Plant

January, 2004

The blast, which reportedly killed 27 people and injured a further 74, apparently originated in a boiler that produces the steam necessary to run the main turbine associated with train 40, one of four parallel units. Early reports suggest that it occurred when plant personnel attempted to restart the boiler, whose furnace may  not have been properly purged. The explosion triggered a fire that immediately spread to the mixed-refrigerant compressor. From there, the fire jumped to trains 30 and 20, two other adjacent liquefaction units (see block plot.) The fact the at the boiler explosion caused damage to the nearby process equipment raises questions about separation distances in the 1970s vintage process facility. This could explain why there was so much collateral damage from the initial explosion and why the resulting fire spread to the adjacent trains so rapidly.

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