Dave Donohue's Blog – July 2024 Archive (5)

In the early 1970’s, Ludwig Benner, a chemical engineer working for the National Transportation Safety Board identified a model of container behavior in hazardous materials incidents that provides impact points for risk reduction actions and provides a model for container and product behavior to help guide emergency response.  The General Hazardous Materials Behavior Model  is a chain of events from the start of an incident…

Emergency response is the cornerstone of hazardous materials teams. While response is important, there are other activities that hazardous materials teams can be involved in that further integrate hazardous materials into the organization, provided added benefits, and open routes to potential new funding streams.

Support at Fire Scenes

The hazardous materials team is capable of providing support at fire scenes with actions that will improve the health and safety of responders.…

Whether your organization is career, volunteer, or combination, it is likely having difficulty finding qualified individuals to fill its ranks.  While recruiting new members has been an issue for some time, the changing demographics of the nation are being skipped as an underlying cause.  Consequently, we are missing some opportunities for identifying and guiding folks…

Hazardous Materials Hot Line^© July 4, 2024

CSB Issues Statement on Hurricane & Weather Preparedness

The U. S. Chemical Safety Board has issued a statement cautioning facility owners to prepare for an active hurricane season.

Discussion:  The CSB has previously released reports on two incidents that resulted from hurricane & tropical weather.  The…

Ask your self, “why do we, the fire and emergency medical services exist?”  If you are like most of us, your answer will be something like, “to respond to calls to make the community safer and to save lives.”  You aren’t wrong, but the question you should be asking is, “why does the community want us to exist?”.  That answer is a little different and it is one that we need to answer if we want to communicate our needs in meeting their expectations. 

The reality is that communities…