Government might drop rail warnings

[jeaton]

Bringing this back up in conjunction to the current thread.

Jay

[dldance]

thanks Jay for bring this one up - I missed this thread last fall. There are some good points to consider but in my experience, that hazmat placard is important as the first line of defense. With some of the products being transported, seconds matter.

dd

[jeaton]

I did this in part as a response to Mike Yuhas' comment in the other thread. I think there was a link to the proposal and request for comments here. My opinion on the proposal to eliminate hazmat placards as a measure to foil terrorists has not changed. Just stupid.

Jay

[Anonymous]

I don't know where to start on this one. First, I think is a case of we don't what to do so we will do the easiest thing for us even if it doesn't really do a thing to stop terrorists. Second, forget technical solutions. Emergencies are chaos and don't happen the way they are supposed to. Not just volunteers are short of funds, everyone is. I work for a good sized metropolitan department and we are using 800 mhz portables that are about 12 years old day-in and day-out in hostile environments. Thanks to cell phones we now have dead spots where we ironically have to use personal Nextels to keep in touch. A software issue forces the dispatchers to abbreviate now to get any additional info on the printout. We have to specifically ask for any additional info or we don't get it.
Recently we started to work on a GIS project. We were field verifying the info and found it way wrong. We we started asking about it we found out the data was nine years old.

The purpose of this rant is to show that when things don't happen the way they supposed to (emergencies) you can't count on anything else to work either. The simplest solutions continue to work when others don't and sticking a label on a car is a simple solution.

Of course the one advantage of no placards is that CSX could run hazmats through DC and they might never catch on.

RH

[ChuckCobleigh]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dekemd

QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod

I think you don't mean Orson Welles, or even H.G. Wells ... you mean George Orwell, right?

Overmod, thanks for the correction. Orson, Orwell, I was getting my Or's confused.

Derrick

Yeah, wasn't Orson Mork's boss back on Ork?

[arbfbe]

After having been involved in two derailments with hazardus cars in the consist and one diisaster simulation with hazardus cars I have the following observations.
First the incident commander knows he is entitled to a copy of the train manafest and it gets collected. Second, they have absolutely NO IDEA what to do with the sheaf of papers they have been given. That train list gives the number and location of every car carrying hazardous materials in the train. It also tells them exactly what to do if any of the hazardous materials are compromised. The crew members can show them how to read it and reference it to the orange Hazardous Materials book the incident commander is supposed to be familiar with. So what do they inevetable do? They call the railroad and ask what is in the train. It somehow takes the railroads HOURS to give them the information in the format they are seaking. Do they ever ask the crew what they know, not in any of the three incicents I have first hand knowledge.

Leave the placards on the cars. Emergency personnel probably do not recognize what information the convey but they do know there might be a hazard. I'll bet it is far more likely a responder will more likely use them to save lives than a terrorist will try to attack a moving train based upon the colored 12" squares of plastic on the sides of some cars.

Alan

[Anonymous]

Let's confuse the terroristrs more. Let's put hazmat warnings on empty cars as ecoys and see how many are attacked. Won't the bad guys be surprised when nothing happens to the car they shot! Simple solutions for (from?) simple minds.

[Anonymous]

Said it before, will say it again.
In my stretch of paradise, we are lucky to have a cell phone that works, a radio that will hit the repeater, and a dispatcher who isn't so busy she can respond to us (if she hears us.)

It's a lot easier for me to find and ID placards on a train than it is to wave a handheld scanner in the general direction of a derailed car. I can read a placard from a distance, too. (Have a set of decent binocs in the car).

As two tank trucks decided to crash in and around my patrol area in the past week, I've become sensitive to what they carry. One was a tanker carrying petroleum products (gasoline) and the other was carrying ammonia. Was told by the firemen how far to keep people back (five city blocks for the ammonia tanker).

My experience with the Federal Government is that they respond fairly slowly, if at all, to anything happening outside their offices... this includes illegal immigrant checks, or the infamous "Terrorist Watch List" so many people are afraid of.

Keep the placards and keep the locals safe. We will catch the terrorists sooner or later.

Erik

[arbfbe]

jwieczorek;

We do that already. The empty dangerous tank cars carry exactly the same placards as the loads do. They used to have empty placards for those cars, commonly the reverse side of the loaded placard but the railroads kept forgetting to have them turned around and were getting fined for having the incorrect side displayed so they did away with the mty cards.

Alan

[dldance]

Placarding empties is a good idea. In the recent San Marcos derailment, the tank cars were all "empty" but still had as much as 200 gallons in them. In the case of a flammable liquid - an "empty" with a few gallons in it is actually more dangerous than a full tank.

dd