SIDNEY — City of Sidney and Shelby County officials received a sneak peek at the planned train derailment Thursday afternoon.
The tour began at Trupointe Co-op where CSX rail cars are ready for the Friday morning’s emergency. Sidney firefighters have been training with CSX employees all week in preparation for the mock chemical emergency.
CSX has its Safety Train on site at the co-op and it contains a training car where classes are held, along with six other cars which are used for hands-on training.
“In 1999, CSX started the Safety Train,” said Mike Bethge, a CSX HazMat official who works out of the Buffalo, New York, office.
“We have two sets of training cars,” said Bethge. “We do 10 full scale trainings per year.”
Each car, he said, is used for training on specific chemicals or hazardous materials. One car contains liquids which are flammables. Another contains chlorine and sulfur dioxide. Another contains anhydrous ammonia.
“Safety is our No. 1 priority,” said Bethge. “If it’s not your No. 1 priority, then you’ll have injuries. We don’t like to have derailments but we want to make sure everyone responds properly to the scene.
“We want fact-based decisions made to protect the public,” he said. “We want to get people back in their homes if they’ve been evacuated. We want to get the businesses up and going.”
Bethge said CSX employees work with the local officials. CSX has trained police officers, HazMat, EMS and field investigators on staff.
“If someone is evacuated and needs to get home to get their medication, we’ll see that that happens,” said Bethge.
If the person has a pet at home, they will make sure the pet is evacuated also.
“The length of the incident all depends on the number of cars and what’s (material) involved.
A new enhanced tanker, he said, was introduced in 2001. It carries petroleum. It has more protection which will help keep the petroleum in the tanker in case of a derailment.
“This car was involved in a real incident a few years ago,” said Bethge. “It’s got scratches, dents and gouges on it.”
The fittings on the tanker, he said, are in protective housings and are built so the valves done sheer off, which prevents leaks.
“A chemical company donated a car to us,” said Bethge. “We have different leaks in it which teaches the HazMat responders how to patch the leaks.
“Our goal is to take control of the tank again (plug the leaks),” he said. “We want to slow down the incident, mitigate it and take control of it.”
The flat car in the Safety Train exercise, has a compartment where drums and boxes are stored during transport. It also has an open are where all the protective housings and valves used on railcars displayed for training exercises.
“We teach the first responders about valves and how they operate,” said Bethge.
He said if a first responders is wearing the correct protective clothing they could open the lid of a railcar and shut a valve in an emergency situation.
There is also a “beverage” car, he said, which transports beverage grade alcohol.
“That tank is all in metric because it travels all over the world,” said Bethge.
The next stop on the tour was Connection Point Church, where the American Red Cross will have an emergency shelter set up.
The group then went to Wilson Hospital where all patients from the emergency will be transported. the hospital has a mobile trailer that can decontaminate anyone who has come in contact with the chemicals in the air.
“We have three different bays in the decon trailer,” said Rochelle Nagle, staff nurse specialist in the emergency room. “One of the bays has a ramp which can be used if the person is on a backboard.”
One bay will be for females and the other bay for males, she said. When the person enters the bay, they would take off their clothes. Then they go into the shower area and wash all the chemicals off them. The third step would be to give the person clean clothes and a towel.
The unit, said Mike Dankworth, Wilson Health plant supervisor, can be operated with propane if the electricity goes out. There is also a heater to heat the water.
“We can get it set up within 10 minutes,” said Dankworth.
The water for the decon trailer comes from the hospital, Dankworth said. The water then drains through the bottom of the floor and a sump pump will pump the water into a storage bladder.
Victims at the emergency site, said Sidney Fire Chief Brad Jones, will be decontaminated at the scene.
“We do gross decon at the scene,” said Jones. “We steal water out of one of the fire engines. We have a tent in the HazMat vehicle that we use for the decon area.”
During an emergency, said Jones, Wilson Health may be receiving patients who weren’t at the scene of the accident, but rather walked through the chemical cloud or drove through it.
Nagel told the group that the hospital has its own EMS service so they can transport patients from the hospital to another hospital or a nursing home. She said the 100th patient was transported on Thursday. The ER has 14 beds and treats 30,000 people a year.
The final stop on the tour was the Sidney Police Department, which will serve as the emergency operations center for the exercise. The EOC is on the second floor of the police department and will be divided up into operations, EOC manager, planning, logistics and finance stations.
The EOC, said Cheri Drinkwine, Shelby County Emergency Management Agency director, is where all the information from the emergency site is collected and decisions are made dealing with the citizens’s safety.
Information such as weather conditions, what type of resources are needed and keeping elected officials in the loop are completed at the EOC. Press releases to the media are also disbursed from this location.
Each person at the EOC knows what their role is during an emergency. The number of people involved will depend on how long the emergency lasts.
“When an incident happens, we want to leave the community left whole,” said Rusty Orben, CSX resident vice president for Ohio.
When an emergency first happens, said Jones, he won’t be in the command center. He’ll be on the scene determining what needs to be done.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to be a controller to make sure things work correctly,” said Jones.
Drinkwine said the local responders will be first on the scene. Then the EMA will be called in and she will help organize state resources to be used at the site.
The EMA’s Facebook account — Shelby County OH – EMA / LEPC — will be posting “alerts” during Friday’s training exercise.
“I’ve been told this is the biggest exercise in the state that’s going on this year,” said Drinkwine. State emergency personnel will be watching to see how the exercise goes.
There are eight objectives which the LEPC exercise is hoping to accomplish Friday morning, she said.
