In the United States, train derailments are fairly common, including this December derailment in Harrisburg. Within a few hours, this train was
placed back on its track, and there were no injuries. Photo by George Drees.
Harrisburg is a railroad town. Railroad towns have wrecks.
Railcars have tumbled from the Rockville Bridge into the Susquehanna River. A double-stacked car jumped off the track last December. Horrific passenger train wrecks in 1962 and 1905 left dozens dead. In that infamous 1905 collision, windows shattered a mile away from the explosion of a boxcar full of dynamite—the kind of explosives that shippers used to hide behind innocuous labels.
In a region honeycombed with rail lines, today’s emergency responders don’t plan for “if” derailments happen. They plan for “when,” including the very real possibility of an East Palestine, Ohio-style hazmat incident.
“We are prepared but never prepared enough,” said Susquehanna Township Fire Marshal George Drees. “We have history here in central PA.”
Local fire companies are the first line of defense.
“Everything starts and ends at the local level,” said Chris Fisher, manager of Dauphin County’s emergency management office.
As an incident escalates, the Dauphin County Emergency Operations Center calls in and coordinates more and more stakeholders to manage the situation.
But who’s in charge? At that local level, there is the “incident commander”—likely a local fire chief—who makes the decisions. If the incident commander doesn’t have the expertise to address a particular situation, county resources can fill in the gaps and offer solutions.
“Ultimately, the incident commander signs off on it,” Fisher said.
Many decisions are best made at the local level, with support from higher-level agencies on such factors as population density and weather models, said David “Randy” Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The greater the risk, the likelier that the model flips, as locals provide input, but higher-level agencies call the shots.
In East Palestine and similar disasters, the issue of unified command comes into play. According to the National Incident Management System, unified command is triggered when no single agency can manage an incident on its own. Without an individual commander, joint decision-making sets aside overlapping and competing jurisdictions.
Unified command minimizes miscommunications when multiple agencies and jurisdictions descend on a scene, Padfield said.
“Everyone has awareness of everyone’s tactics and plans, and you have a consistent planning process that involves everyone,” he said. “No one is caught off guard, and everybody has a common understanding of the situation and what the tactics are going to be.”
Courses of Action
In the case of an incident, rail companies have “pretty broad authority to operate legally within the right of the rail,” but the dialog and information sharing of unified command are meant, in part, to balance business concerns with public safety, Padfield said.
Advance discussion raises awareness and allows agencies on the scene to prepare for responding to tactical decisions—perhaps picking the moment when atmospheric conditions are right for an evacuation.
In East Palestine, a decision to vent and burn one unstable railcar morphed within 12 hours into the vent-and-burn of five cars, Padfield said. That left other agencies in a “compressed time environment” for planning, he said. At a state Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee hearing, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw repeatedly said that unified command made the decision.
“Trying to understand what changed—that’s information we didn’t have,” Padfield told TheBurg. “What other courses of action did you investigate, and why did you choose this course of action versus the other ones? There was no dialog associated with any of that to try to figure out what other courses were actually explored to be able to mitigate that situation.”
Days after the East Palestine incident, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro asked the same questions in a letter accusing Norfolk Southern of failing to implement unified command, acting unilaterally, giving inaccurate information and conflicting modeling about the impact of a controlled release, and limiting state and local response by failing to “explore or articulate courses of action.”
Norfolk Southern did not answer TheBurg’s request for a response to those particular charges. Through an email, spokesperson Connor Spielmaker said the rail company was on the Ohio scene immediately “and began working directly with local, state and federal officials as they arrived at the unified command established in East Palestine by local officials, including those from Pennsylvania.”
As for what’s in the railcars rumbling through town, rail lines must provide counties with the information needed for a “commodity flow” study showing materials that have been carried through a county. The study equips county emergency managers to prepare according to the laws of probability, but it doesn’t show what’s coming through on a given day. When an incident occurs, responders cross-check railcar identification numbers with an app called AskRail, which details what the car is carrying.
“It’s no secret to us that the largest quantity of hazardous materials that comes through our area by train is propane,” Fisher said. “From a planning perspective, let’s concentrate on those things that statistically have a higher chance of happening in our area and base our training exercises off that.”
And while federal law allows you, member of the public, to read county reports on the hazardous chemicals that businesses use and store, you can’t read the commodity flow study. That’s protected by nondisclosure agreements the county signs with Norfolk Southern.
Worst Case
Coincidentally, long before East Palestine, planning was underway for a coordination exercise testing county and municipal response capabilities to a fictional train derailment and propane release. The exercise explored the human impact across various settings—city center, a hospital and nursing home, a one-road rural town where the only evacuation route is by river.
“What is the worst case?” Fisher said. “If we can come up with ideas to manage the worst-case scenario, then the rest of the stuff falls into place.”
PEMA develops standards and certifies the hazmat response teams mandated for every Pennsylvania county. PEMA also distributes grants, funded by fees paid by businesses that store certain chemicals, for training and equipment, determined by local emergency planning committees based on community needs and threats.
In general, fire company first responders are trained and equipped for hazmat defense—monitoring air quality in the immediate area, keeping contamination from spreading, avoiding environmental damage, rescuing or evacuating affected residents.
The people in the hazmat suits are trained in offense—going in to stop leaks, close valves and make repairs. Those hazmat team members can also be trained as tank car specialists, building expertise on assessing damage and dealing with specific railcar types.
Norfolk Southern has announced creation of a new, dedicated training facility for first responders to be sited near East Palestine, but has no details yet about how trainees will be selected and whether the free training will include reimbursement for travel expenses and lost wages.
The company continues its Operation Awareness and Response program, staffed by hazardous materials experts for free first-responder training and education in Norfolk Southern communities, Spielmaker said. The program’s “safety train,” including specially equipped boxcars and tank cars for hands-on training, travels the Norfolk Southern lines. Norfolk Southern also participates in the multilateral TRANSCAER program that trains first responders and supports community planning nationwide.
“Our experts can travel to local fire houses to perform a variety of classroom, technical and tabletop trainings,” he said. “Our safety train also travels our network annually to a number of stops, this year including Harrisburg.”
As Drees said, planning is always underway, but there’s no such thing as full preparedness. If you live in the 21st century, a disaster is on its way, whether by rail or from the clouds, so visit www.ready.pa.gov to learn how to make an evacuation plan and pack up your emergency supplies.
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