CALL THE HAZ-MAT EXPERTS
TRAINING NOTEBOOK
Many transportation accidents involve cargo tanks or tank ears with complicated valving and safety relief features. In a hazardous-materials transportation accident, your knowledge of the container’s characteristics and your experience in dealing with it can be critical. Most emergency response agencies do not have hazardous-materials teams experienced in dealing with these sophisticated tanks and valves. But we can find experts to help.
Contact the railroads, major trucking companies, other agencies, and chemical manufacturers and distributors in your jurisdiction. Meet with them and discuss their areas of specialized knowledge to find people who work with complicated valves and state-of-the-art chemicals on a daily basis. These are the people to contact in an emergency.
POSSIBLE SCENARIOS
Suppose you walk into your storage room at home and see a small bottle of garden insecticide on its side. You presumably would not run screaming from the area. Because you know that your storage room doesn’t contain any atomic bombs and the bottle doesn’t appear to be vibrating, you’d probably just walk up for a closer look. Alter all, you are familiar with the contents of your storage room and wouldn’t even bother to consciously determine if you smelled anything unusual.
On closer examination, you see that the bottle contains four ounces of Diazinon, an insecticide. If you drank that amount it could kill you or at least make you terribly sick. But even though you recognize this toxic poison, you wouldn’t run from the area to call the fire department. You would look at the bottle, upright it, and continue about your business.
Your actions are typical of those taken in hazardous-materials transportation accidents. The reasons you uprighted the toxic poison without a second thought include the following:
- The four-ounce glass bottle of garden insecticide was within your frame of reference. You were familiar with it, and you felt comfortable han-
- dling it. You have handled similar containers dozens of times before.
- You didn’t detect any odor of Diazinon, which you knew would have been present had any been spilled.
- You didn’t see any spilled liquid on the shelf. Therefore, you assumed the package’s integrity hadn’t been compromised.
- There were no stains on the label or any other indication that the liquid contents had spilled.
- The cap was intact and in place and showed no signs of having leaked any poison.
- The glass bottle wasn’t cracked and obviously hadn’t failed.
Based on these observations, you were comfortable with the glass container of poison. You were familiar with its characteristics and indications of failure.
Now suppose you are walking through a janitorial supplies warehouse and notice a 55-gallon polyethylene drum on its side. There is a black-and-white U.S. DOT “CORROSIVE” label on it, and the name on the drum indicates it’s an acid. You find a worker in the warehouse and tell him what you have found. He asks you to come over and help him upright the drum since it weighs about 500 pounds. Although you feel uncomfortable—and study the drum first—you help him upright the container. The warehouse worker uprighted the drum of corrosives for all the same reasons that you uprighted the fourounce glass bottle in your storagearea.
Now imagine that you are taking a tour of a compressed gas company, and you notice a cylinder lying on the floor. The cylinder has a black-andwhite U S. DOT label on it —the skulland-crossbones symbol for a poison— and the word “CHLORINE.” In addition, “CHLORINE” is stenciled onto the cylinder and you notice dozens of other chlorine cylinders in the area.
Treat the overturned chlorine cylinder exactly as you would the bottle of poison and the drum of corrosives. An expert at the compressed gas company who has worked with chlorine for a number of years will be familiar with chlorine cylinders, their performance characteristics, and what abuse they will and will not tolerate. He has experience with valves, safety cap performance, and indications of container failure. He uses the same thought process in dealing with the chlorine cylinder that you used for the four-ounce glass bottle in your storage room.
Finally, consider a derailed tank car loaded with chlorine. The car has “CHLORINE” placards with the skull and crossbones and is lying on its side next to a derailed locomotive. Your first reaction might be that this is an entirely different situation since you’re dealing with thousands of gallons of deadly chlorine. But nothing has changed, except that it’s a lot harder to find someone who has worked with dozens of overturned chlorine railroad tank cars. Very few hazardous-materials emergency responders feel comfortable with them or find dealing with overturned chlorine railroad tank cars within their frame of reference. However, assume that the railroad or shipper sends an expert to the accident site. This expert is thoroughly familiar with derailed and damaged chlorine railroad tank cars. He is comfortable dealing with them since thev’re within his frame of reference. He detects no odor, sees no liquid spill, and sees no visible indications on the tank car body (package) of any leaks. He sees that the valves and closures are intact and that the container is undamaged. He is familiar with the indications of failure of railroad chlorine tank cars. He. discusses the situation with the shipper and his work crew supervisors, orders in a crane the next day, and leaves.
CALL IN THE EXPERTS
I encountered this exact scenario with an overturned railroad chlorinetank car when I began my hazardousmaterials transportation emergency response career. I w as outraged at the “irresponsible” behavior of the hazmat expert. After all, we didn’t evacuate everyone within two miles—just the reverse happened, and within an hour everyone went home.
Now, hundreds of incidents and a number of years later, I am very comfortable working with this same railroad hazardous-materials expert. I’ve learned that in working with the “packages” that he sees every day, he’s within his frame of reference. He is just as comfortable with an overturned railroad tank car as I am with a four-ounce glass bottle of garden insecticide in my storage room, and for exactly the same reasons.
Most public safety agencies don’t have container or valve experts on their hazardous-materials teams. Very few of us consider an overturned railroad chlorine tank car w ithin our frame of reference. However, the railroads and some shippers do have people who are familiar with overturned railroad chlorine tank cars. When faced with this situation, call an expert immediately and take advantage of his experience.
There may be other emergency response agencies in your area with experts in particular fields. Get to know the capabilities of industry and other agencies, and locate the people who have specialized expertise. This way you’ll be able to get help when you’re faced with a complicated hazardous-materials incident.
(Photos by author.)
