Schumer: First Responders Should Not Be Left in the Dark about Hazardous Materials Traveling Through Their Community

Press Release

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today, on a conference call with reporters, urged the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) to issue a rule that rail companies must share with essential local first responders and emergency personnel potentially life-saving information about the contents of hazardous materials traveling in their rail cars. Schumer explained that even though the transport of highly volatile crude oil through Upstate New York has skyrocketed, there is currently no requirement for the rail companies that transport this crude oil or ethanol to notify local first responders about the timing or contents of the train cars. Schumer, therefore, is pushing the federal DOT to issue a rule that would require rail companies to report the contents and schedule of their train cars when carrying hazardous material -- a requirement that is recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board.

"As hazardous materials travel over our railways with increasing frequency, our local first responders and emergency personnel must be in-the-know about the content and schedule of these rail cars; but disturbingly, they do not receive information from rail companies about what's traveling the rails. This is an absurd and dangerous gap in knowledge that should be quickly corrected," said Schumer. "So I'm urging the federal Department of Transportation to issue a rule and establish a permanent program requiring rail companies to notify localities about their shipments in real-time. It's a simple step that would give first responders the tools to better handle an emergency, and save lives and property. For communities throughout Upstate New York where these cars rumble through on a daily basis, this is a common sense policy that would make rail transport safer."

Schumer said that it is both absurd and dangerous that local first responders, fire departments and other emergency personnel don't know the contents of the hazardous materials transported through their communities by rail on a real-time basis. In the event of a derailment or fire, first responders need to know what chemical caused the fire in order to assess how best to contain and fight it. First responders rely on timely hazard information to determine appropriate isolation distances, decide whether evacuation or shelter-in-place is appropriate, determine appropriate health and safety protocols for responders and rescuers, and decide appropriate firefighting tactics. The Lac-Megantic explosion, and a subsequent derailment in New Brunswick, revealed that first responders do not have access in real-time to the information they need. Following the November 30, 2012, derailment of a Conrail freight train with release of vinyl chloride in Paulsboro, New Jersey, the NTSB convened an investigative hearing during which emergency responders testified at the hearing that their response actions were hindered by the lack of timely and accurate train consist information.

Schumer, who has long been a proponent of stricter safety standards for crude oil transported by rail, is now pushing for a federal requirement to share information about hazardous rail cargo to relevant parties through a secure program. Specifically, Schumer is urging the federal DOT, through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), to complete a recommendation proposed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which recommends that the federal DOT, "with the assistance of the Federal Railroad Administration, require that railroads immediately provide to emergency responders accurate, real-time information regarding the identity and location of all hazardous materials on a train." The NTSB, to this day, continues to investigate accidents where emergency responders did not have timely and accurate hazard information from railroad operators before an accident. This causes great concern that first responders such as firefighters may in many cases not have sufficient information to make critical real time decisions in the event of a significant derailment like those in Lac Megantic or Casselton, North Dakota. First responders rely on timely hazard communications include determining appropriate isolation distances, deciding whether evacuation or shelter-in-place is appropriate, determining appropriate health and safety protocols for responders and rescuers, and deciding appropriate firefighting tactics.

Emergency personnel and County Executives from across Upstate New York have requested information from train companies transporting crude oil and other hazardous materials, but they have not been able to get information about when these materials are traveling through their communities and exactly what materials are loaded on to these trains.

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