Realistic Manning Level during Accidents

You may have heard the news of 150+ people dying in an oil tanker blast in Pakistan. Some of you may not have heard of it as it’s a news from 3rd world where lives don’t matter. Black, white or brown, none of it. Here is the link for the interested ones. https://indianexpress.com/article/pakistan/pakistan-oil-tanker-fire-death-toll-rises-to-175-4727394/

I have done more than a dozen QRAs (Quantitative Risk Assessments) and never came across a blast scenario which had the potential of killing these many people.

Initially I thought that the tanker must be passing through a very densely populated area when the incident happened which is quite possible in this part of the world.

But then I read the news in detail and came to know that the people had rushed to collect the leaking oil. And this gathering resulted in this mass casualty.

Plant operators are definitely not greedy like these Pakistani but they also tend to contain the event by engaging more operators than usual when some mishap happens. I not giving away the link of such real-life accidents. Google such incidents if you doubt my statement and in due course you will learn new things.

I have visited oil and gas facilities myself and have observed numerous construction workers engaged in expansion / modification of live plants.  The manning levels were definitely higher than the usual manning data supplied to consultants for safety studies.

This increased level of manning is never captured in QRAs and I wonder how accurate and realistic are our safety studies.

Do we accurately account for human factor: how do they really respond during emergency. Do they take deviations from the Standard Operating Procedures and Emergency Response Plans?