What do most railroad employees know about the loads in freight cars?
In the Summer of 1992 at the Kalamazoo Conrail Yard I talked to a group of guys in the office about a DuPont tank car loaded with Titanium Dioxide. They thought it was hazardous and could be turned into a bomb.[(-D] What? Titanium Dioxide is non-combustible. [banghead]
With more emphasis being placed safety, are employees now being educated on the real dangerous loads versus just a load of pigment. There is caution, then there is paranoia.
The train list says what is contained in each load. Information regarding any haz mat must be known in case of emergency, so the proper authorities can be notified/warned.
It’s not as much of what you know as how quickly you can put your finger on the information. In my job, I have descriptions, uses, dangers, and evacuation and first-aid instructions for any hazmat we haul in about 13 key-strokes on my computer keyboard. If I’m curious about a vague description on my switch list, waybill information is about 20 strokes away. In your case, Andrew, a little background information goes a long way–titanium dioxide might sound impressive, but a little experience can tell you how harmless it is (unless you’re covered in it!).
Crews, in road service, receive Hazmat documentation for each Hazmat that is in their train…loads and empties that contain Hazmat residue from their previous load. Having the documentation and being able to fully comprehend all that is described within the documentation are two different things. The documentation is written to convey to emergency responders the required information that is needed to handle an emergency with the commodity. Crews are required to make their train documentation available to the emergency responders upon the responders arrival. In yard service the documentation required for movement of Hazmat is not as stringent as it is for line of road movements.
The wheel report or switch list for each car shows the product name and the UN number as well as the commodity class. Attached to the wheel report will be a list of all the commodities in the train with the actions to take if the load is involved in a derailment or leak. Additionally, each employee is required to carry a little orang reference book just like the emergency responders carry on their vehicles where they can find actions to take in the event of a spill or fire which is referenced according to commodity name or UN number. It should not take any employee at the scene more than about 3 minutes to have all the information needed to determine the plan of action to follow. Their lives depend upon that.
The hardest part is getting the “even commander, or site commander” who believes he is in charge to listen to you or to take the time to look at the papers with you. They are just too busy trying to find someone at HQ who has computer access to tell them something. I have seen them send an armed deputy down to the crew to sieze the train list and then just toss it aside without looking to see what it contains. Instead they are busy on the phones calling God and everyone seeking the information laying on the pile within inches of their faces.
Like my mother, who’s a librarian, says "I don’t have to know everything. I just have to know where to find it."
Your train consist will tell you what’s in each car, and any special handling or HAZMAT information. There’s also the orange Hazardous Materials Responce Guide and the information is avalable from the computer system as well.
Realistically, it’s nearly impossible for anyone to memorize the characteristics of every commodity a railroad employee may come in contact with.
The smart IC (incident commander) will use whatever is at his disposal, however, in our line of work, like any others, we have the practical, “Let’s get the job done” types, and the “Oh goody, it’s my turn to perform” types. In other words, the way an incident is handled depends on the personality of the person in charge. Alot of Officers (Chiefs, Battalion Chiefs, Shift Commanders, etc) are pretty level headed, take charge, and use whatever resources are available. In our dispatch center, we have the Little Orange Book, along with whatever is needed to call who ever is needed for whatever might be spilled, leaking, or burning (or all 3) But, there is that small group out there, who can’t wait to “be on stage”, and use all of the latest golly-whiz gadgetry that is out there. … they give us dispatchers headaches…
Incident command is usually initiated by the first in company on the initial size up. If the lead company officer has a derailment, and fire, he is going to “pull a box” (request a box alarm, which gets mutual aid from surrounding towns), and that first officer is in charge until the next immediate superior arrives, then, once the Chief arrives, he takes over… It really runs pretty smoothly, to be honest… But, as I stated the smart IC will use whatever method will get him the info the fastest, and it has been my experience, if someone has the necessary information nearby, they will utilize it, while having us dispatcher get more in depth info if it is needed. I know very few in this line of work that would ignore the train’s manifest if it were handed to them.
arbfbe, I don’t mean to pick nits, but the 4 digit numbers are not UN identifiers. These numbers are part of the DOT’s Hazardous Materials Program(49 CFR, parts 105-178). These 4 digit numbers, starting with 1001, Acetylene and ending with 9279, Hydrogen, absorbed in metal hydride, is and most likely the only product of a government agency that has ever produced anything useful. (long winded sentence!) Other agencies, such the EPA and OSHA, have CFR’s regarding haz-mat transportation.
The UN numbers usually consist of 2 or 3 digits. Oftimes an ‘x’ will preceed these numbers. Almos
Better tell my hazmat instructors about that one… And the ERG. While the ERG generally refers only to an “ID Number,” The example of shipping papers specifically shows the commodity involved as “UN1219”. Further, the instructions tell one to:
IDENTIFY THE MATERIAL BY FINDING ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
THE 4-DIGIT ID NUMBER ON A PLACARD OR ORANGE PANEL
THE 4-DIGIT ID NUMBER (after UN/NA) ON A SHIPPING DOCUMENT OR PACKAGE
THE NAME OF THE MATERIAL ON A SHIPPING DOCUMENT, PLACARD OR PACKAGE
Wikipedia provides the following definition for “UN Number:”
UN numbers or UN IDs are four-digit numbers that identify dangerous goods hazardous substances and articles (such as explosives, flammable liquids, toxic substances, etc.) in the framework of international transport. Some hazardous substances have their own UN numbers (e.g. acrylamide has UN2074), while sometimes groups of chemicals or products with similar properties receive a common UN number (e.g. flammable liquid, not otherwise specified, have UN1993). A chemical in its solid state may receive a different UN number than the liquid phase if their hazardous properties differ significantly; substances with different levels of purity may also receive different UN numbers.
On the other hand, some international shipments may have a two or three digit “Hazard Identification Number,” thus - from the ERG:
[i]Hazard identification codes, referred to as "hazard id
Better tell my hazmat instructors about that one… And the ERG. While the ERG generally refers only to an “ID Number,” The example of shipping papers specifically shows the commodity involved as “UN1219”. Further, the instructions tell one to:
IDENTIFY THE MATERIAL BY FINDING ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
THE 4-DIGIT ID NUMBER ON A PLACARD OR ORANGE PANEL
THE 4-DIGIT ID NUMBER (after UN/NA) ON A SHIPPING DOCUMENT OR PACKAGE
THE NAME OF THE MATERIAL ON A SHIPPING DOCUMENT, PLACARD OR PACKAGE
Wikipedia provides the following definition for “UN Number:”
UN numbers or UN IDs are four-digit numbers that identify dangerous goods hazardous substances and articles (such as explosives, flammable liquids, toxic substances, etc.) in the framework of international transport. Some hazardous substances have their own UN numbers (e.g. acrylamide has UN2074), while sometimes groups of chemicals or products with similar properties receive a common UN number (e.g. flammable liquid, not otherwise specified, have UN1993). A chemical in its solid state may receive a different UN number than the liquid phase if their hazardous properties differ significantly; substances with different levels of purity may also receive different UN numbers.
On the other hand, some international shipments may have a two or three digit “Hazard Identification Number,” thus - from the ERG:
Please get the word out amongst the responders. Everything they immediately need to know is found in the train list, wheel report or consist found on the train. Ask the crew to go over it with you to save some time. Let your asst handle the radio for about 10 minutes and you will be way ahead in the game. This comes from one exercise and and two actual events. If there is a next time the IC and I will have a talk BEFORE the papers leave my hands. I will not surrender the papers until he acknowledges he understands fully what information they contain and how they can help him. Until then he is just another untrained civilian at the site and I will probably inform him/her they are actually hindering the situation and I need to only give the documents so someone who can make use of them. The papers actually remain the property of the railroad even after being surrendered.
When you’re up to your a** in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your mission is to drain the swamp.
In the case of a railroad hazmat incident, the IC is going in about seven directions at once. There’s access, appropriate resources, evacuations, hot zones, warm zones, wind speed and direction, etc and so on.
While the train crew has the paperwork, unless they’ve already walked the train they have only a general idea of what’s on the ground (in the case of a mixed manifest). In that respect, the IC may actually know more than the crew if he already has placard information (as he may) on the involved cars.
Not that the crew won’t have valuable information (what else is in the train?), but unless they’ve got the MSDSs for all of the commodities with that paperwork, the Hazmat Team’s computers are far more useful once they know what they’ve got.
Here’s a question for train crews - have you ever heard the term “unified command?”
Exactly my point. From experience I can say that is probably a pretty busy person. They are just spinning their wheels in leventy-two different directions until they know what is on the train. I have, in my hands EVERYTHING the IC needs. No one else to call, no other numbers to look up and a detailed description of what type of clothing the responders need to use as well as the proper medium to employ to fight any fire which may be present. Full MSDS? Probably not but a concise abridgement of all the pertinent information needed to handle the situation. You would think I would be an important person to talk to yet experience has shown no one asks and no one seems to know why I am supposed to deliver this pile of papers to them.
I have never been to an accident scene yet where the IC knew more about the car contents than the train crew. I have never yet been to
I used to work for the Bureau of Explosives and a Class I railroad’s Hazardous Material Control departmrtment.
The direct answer to the headline question is very little, none in a technical sense. They do not have to. What they do have to do is recognize that a car is hazardous, place it properly in train, have shipping papers, and have emergency response data.
The UN numbers in fact came from the UN. Our DOT addopted them some 20-25 years ago. As I recall, they originated in Europe due to the variety of languages there. The numeric hazard class we now have derives from the same logic. Our hazard classes used to be plain language, like Flammable Liquid or Flammable Gas.
I would never encourage anyone to use the UN number as a basis for emergency response because many of them cover multiple materials. I alway told emergency responders, and not in jest, to put the DOT Emergency response guidebook, which brought thousands of materials to 66 standard respones, under the short leg of the Chief’s desk. The BOE developed system used by the railroads is far more accurate.