Emergency Response

If you have ever walked the stairs of a highrise building or the halls of a large hotel you have seen a “Standpipe System”. Many industrial facilities have these systems in place as well.  In fact some state fire and building codes REQUIRE these systems be “installed”.  Notice I emphasised “installed”, as most were installed,

What has changed in the definition of an IDLH atmosphere? NIOSH has removed the mention of the 30 minute time period, based on intraspecies variation factors. There is no mention of the 30-minutes in the new definition.  A little history about the IDLH designation… The concept of using respirators to protect workers in situations that

A bit of info that many emergency responders do not know! A Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE) can occur with non-flammable materials such as cryogenics like liquid Oxygen, Nitorgen, etc. All we need to have in place for a BLEVE to occur is a material with a high vapor pressure (thus a low BP),

This new tool was designed for oil spill responders, but should be useful to many others.  The NOAA Unit Converter for Oil Spills (NUCOS) is a simple desktop tool that converts basic units of velocity, mass, length, etc., but more specifically, converts units that are unique to oil spill response. NUCOS includes some of the

The new Training Package for responding to ethanol incidents includes an instructors manual, a participant packet, interactive workshop materials, PowerPoint presentations, two videos and guidelines for fire departments to have ethanol production facilities in their communities. This extensive package is very beneficial giving the sources to be knowledgeable and prepared for any ethanol emergency situation.

Generally, responders rely primarily on Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) maintained at the facility. However, MSDSs may not provide sufficient information to effectively and safely respond to accidental releases. This Alert is designed to increase awareness of MSDS limitations, so that first responders can take proper precautions, and identify additional sources of chemical information, which

TRANSCAER® recently launched a 27-state training tour to provide education and training sessions on emergency response techniques involving anhydrous ammonia.

In my line of work, I deal with a lot of fire departments.  It almost never fails that I am told at least once while on scene that “all that OSHA stuff don’t apply to us”.  In many cases this is a true statement; however, EPA has adopted OSHA’s Hazwoper standard (1910.120) and will enforce

We get this question in every 24, 40, and 8 hour refreshers we do. The scenario is most often like this…emergency alarm sounds, response team responds and begins operations to control and mitigate the emergency. Senior management, not part of the ERT, arrives on scene and begins to ask questions about the tactics and timing.