Seven Companies Win TRANSCAER Achievement Awards
Five railroads and two chemical companies were honored for helping communities prepare for and respond to potential hazmat incidents.
TRANSCAER® (Transportation Community Awareness and Emergency Response) announced that seven companies are recipients of its 2010 TRANSCAER National Achievement Award for assisting communities in their preparedness and response to potential hazmat transportation incidents. This winners are BNSF Railway Company, CSX Transportation, the Canadian National Railways—CN Dangerous Goods Team, Norfolk Southern Corporation, Union Pacific Railroad, the DuPont CAER Car Program, and The Dow Chemical Company.
"Through TRANSCAER, first responders receive the information and training they need to effectively respond in the unlikely event of a chemical transportation incident, to protect the public and safeguard our communities," said Rollie Shook, who chairs the National TRANSCAER Task Group and is Global Emergency Services Leader, Emergency Services & Security Expertise Center, for Dow Chemical. "The TRANSCAER awards recognize those companies that have undertaken exceptional efforts to ensure the safe and secure transportation of potentially hazardous products."
2010 Regional Achievement Awards went to the state TRANSCAER teams in California, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The Chairman's Award was presented to TRANSCAER Region 4 Coordinator Dave Buccolo of the Central California Traction Company, and David Binder with Tanner Industries, Inc., who is chair of the 2011 Anhydrous Ammonia Tour Curriculum Development Committee.
TRANSCAER companies train local emergency responders by using hands-on activities, emergency planning assistance, community drills and exercises, table-top exercises, and whistle-stop tours. The organization's announcement cited these efforts by the seven national winners:
- BNSF Railway Company (Fort Worth, Texas). BNSF is committed to training 2,500 emergency responders each year and in 2010 conducted major training tours in California and Montana, as well as outreach in Utah, Oregon, Washington state, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. BNSF Railway operates in 28 states with 33,000 track miles in the central, western, and southeastern United States and transports approximately 1.2 million shipments of hazardous materials annually.
- CSX Transportation (Jacksonville, Fla.). The largest railroad in the eastern United States, CSXT operates in 23 states and two Canadian provinces and transports approximately 421,000 carloads of hazardous materials per year. CSXT continues to show its commitment to providing quality training to more responders through two new self-study training programs and by providing outreach presentations to more than 41 local management agencies in the states in which it operates. In 2010, CSXT hazmat managers held more than 59 first responder training classes, five crisis management exercises, and two live drills.
- Canadian National Railways CN Dangerous Goods Team (Montreal, CN). As part of TRANSCAER and Emergency Services Training Center initiatives, the CN Dangerous Goods Team works year-round to establish community outreach programs. CN supports local communities with its hazardous materials traffic information and uses mock exercises and training to help customers ship hazardous materials safely. In 2010, the team trained 5,020 emergency responders during 257 TRANSCAER events in North America.
- DuPont CAER Car Program (Wilmington, Del.). Established in 1988, the DuPont CAER Car™ Partnership has become an industry leader in transportation, community awareness, and emergency response, providing responder training in more than 1,100 communities in more than 22 countries. The program uses five CAER tank cars, including three ISO CAER-tainer® units to simulate emergency response conditions for its training in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Asia-Pacific region.
- Norfolk Southern Corp. (Norfolk, Va.). Norfolk Southern Corporation operates railroad transportation through 22 states and held TRANSCAER training events in 15 of them in 2010, reaching more than 5,000 emergency responders in 92 cities and counties. Norfolk Southern provided classroom, hands-on training, table-top simulations, and drills to local emergency planning committees, emergency responders, and government officials.
- The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.). In 2010, Dow Chemical continued to illustrate its commitment to improving community awareness and preparedness along chemical transportation routes through its TRANSCAER Training Tours. During a six-month period, more than 1,640 participants in 19 locations in nine states took part in the tours.
- Union Pacific Railroad (Omaha, Neb.). Union Pacific Railroad is one of the national largest chemical haulers, operating in 23 states in the western United States and along key north/south corridors. In 2010, UP held 61 training events and reached more than 3,300 emergency responders. UP also provided 58 communities with hazardous materials traffic density commodity flow studies and coordinated eight drills to ensure community preparedness.