Safety Board Calls on DOT To Improve Haz-Mat Rules
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The Editor’s Opinion Page
Every once in a while, something occurs in Washington, D.C., that makes capital sense.
One such occurrence recently that caught our attention is the recommendation of the National Transportation Safety Board to the Department of Transportation to improve it hazardous materials transportation regulations. The NTSB noted that since 1969, it had made more than 70 recommendations in the haz-mat area. Although some of the recommendations were implemented, the NTSB stated, “corrective actions for other identified problems have been delayed—sometimes for years. The delayed correction of identified safety problems results in needless additional losses, both economic and human, to shippers, carriers, employees in the transportation system, emergency response personnel, and the public.”
All of us know that “emergency response personnel” is just a longer way of saying “fire fighters” in relation to mitigating haz-mat incidents. While the police are vital in securing a haz-mat incident area, it is the fire service that has the reponsibility, knowledge and best immediately available resources to take the initial actions to bring the situation under control.
One of the NTSB recommendations is that the DOT require all new haz-mat regulations to be designed “to ensure that the protective measures required for each quantity and form of a material reduce the hazards to a level such that the public is exposed to no unreasonable risks.”
The DOT also was asked to implement within fire years a program to make safety analysis evaluations of current requirements for hazardous materials shipments that pose unreasonable risks.
Five years is enough time to do a lot of forgetting. The fire service has a personal interest in upgrading hazardous materials transportation safety, and it should take a cooperative watchdog role to make sure that the DOT does not forget the real need to improve safety. Our active support of this program can save the lives of fire fighters.
