(The following story by Lisa Miller appeared on the Telegraph-Forum website on March 26.)
BUCYRUS, Ohio — What if?
That was the jumping off point for emergency responders’ regional training meetings conducted Wednesday by Norfolk Southern Corporation at the Youth Building at the Crawford County Fairgrounds.
Tom Davis, assistant manager, hazardous materials, for the railroad’s environmental protection department, conducted the morning and afternoon sessions on safety and emergency response and products being shipped through Crawford County.
“We went through a lot of scenarios, pretty interesting,” Crawford County Emergency Management Agency director Tim Flock said as the morning class wound down. “Really made people think.”
Along with volunteer and fulltime firefighters from around the area, Red Cross volunteers, township trustees and other public officials and community members attended the two sessions with about 40 at the morning meeting and an equal number expected in the evening.
With two major railroads, Norfolk Southern and CSX, along with hundreds of trucks rolling through the area, hazardous materials response is important in this area, Flock and Davis both said.
“Do the math,” Davis said as he presented a scenario about a hazardous materials spill. “How long would it take you to get from your station to the incident call?”
Barry Herschler, a firefighter with the Bucyrus Fire Department for 5 1/2 years, said, “It was a good class.”
He said the material presented was informative and a “refresher.”
Davis told responders, “Hopefully you will never have to put any of this into practice … Please take your time when you get there … Don’t go charging down there, somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Based in Elkhart, Ind., Davis said the railroad does the classes “on request and we do it quite a bit.”
He complimented the local group as “a good class today. Got a lot of good questions … They have a good grasp of it.”