Published: August 14, 2008 11:54 pm         

Fire official: Total control a must for haz-mat accidents

A firefighter trained in hazardous materials leaking at a highway accident scene needs to be in total charge, no matter how long motorists are stalled in traffic, until all danger subsides, a veteran Beckley fire official says.

Controversy has been kindled in the aftermath of last week’s horrendous crash of a chemical-laden tractor-trailer along the West Virginia Turnpike.

Stranded for hours on and off the 88-mile toll road, motorists fumed to the point that Gov. Joe Manchin is seeking a complete analysis to see what went wrong and what proper actions were taken.

“I think he erred on the side of caution,” Beckley Fire Capt. Billie Trump said Thursday in reference to an East Bank assistant fire chief criticized by a highway official for taking several hours to clear the scene.

“If I were in his shoes, I probably would have done the same thing. I think, honestly, if you have a situation like that, the haz-mat guy needs to have complete charge.”

There has been some talk in the wake of the Aug. 4 crash that killed driver Gary Shrout, 69, of Leesburg, Ohio, that the state Legislature might want to tamper with a 1982 law putting a haz-mat official in complete control at accidents that involve chemicals so others can share in the decision-making.

Trump feels that would be a mistake.

“I think that’s really kind of an over-reaction,” Trump said of the suggestion made Tuesday when West Virginia Parkways Authority officials and highway leaders huddled to assess the crash.

“Who are you going to put in charge? Police officers? I have absolute respect for them. They have a remarkably difficult job. Do you want to send them through a haz-mat awareness class, haz-mat operations class, 24 hours, then the 40-hour-plus haz-mat technician class and the requirement for them to go to haz-mat incident commander’s class, another 24 hours, and then make sure they keep their updates on an annual basis? You want to add that to the police officers? I’m sure they don’t want it. Hazardous materials usually fall in the purview of the fire departments. We do a lot of training. We have the equipment. Really, that’s the key. You have to keep your training up.”

After potentially lethal chemicals seep out of a disabled truck, the utmost caution is needed, said Trump, an 18-year Beckley fire veteran who has been associated with haz-mat operations since early on in his career.

“When you look at the potential for harm that could be caused by these chemicals, you have to balance that,” he said.

“And sometimes, you just can’t move quickly.”

Trump said public safety must take precedence over stranded motorists when chemicals have poured onto a wreck scene, posing health hazards.

“There are all sorts of very strong acids and gases and things that go up and down the road all the time that could potentially cause a lot of harm,” he said.

Depending on the chemical, perimeters vary at crash sites. In last week’s accident, firefighters sealed off all lanes after the tractor-trailer jackknifed on a bridge a short distance from the Chelyan toll plaza.

“If it’s a solid, it’s a smaller perimeter,” Trump said.

“If it’s a liquid, the perimeter grows. And if it’s a gas, depending on the weather conditions and things like that, the perimeter grows even more. If it has the potential to explode, like some organic peroxides, and things like that do, you may want to set up a half-mile exclusion area around that whole thing.”

Trump recalled a class that examined a solid which broke loose on a large bridge in San Francisco and the span was shut down for eight or 10 hours until officials managed to identify it.

A haz-mat instructor and member of a regional response team, Trump alluded to potential liability a jurisdiction might incur if a police officer prematurely allowed traffic to resume and motorists inhaled noxious fumes that hadn’t been cleared.

Beckley’s department functions under a grant allowing it to identify solids and liquids.

“We’ve got this little piece of high-tech equipment,” Trump said.

“Identification is the key. We can take that down range, and within three or four minutes, we can tell you what it is. If we know what it is and get a handle on it, we can clean it up and get people moving fairly quickly. But if you don’t have that technology, sometimes it’s difficult.”

Trucks hauling chemicals are supposed to have them clearly labeled and drivers are obligated to keep bills of lading.

“If you have a mixed load or there are a lot of chemicals, if they’re shipped in quantities of less than 1,000 pounds, you don’t have to placard the vehicle,” Trump said.

“But the problem is, if you have a situation where it’s less than 1,000 pounds, the placard may just say, ‘drive safely.’ And then you have to get the shipping papers to identify the chemical. And there are other things that have to be placarded in any quantity, like explosive, radioactive materials — things like that.”

Manpower is another factor that must be considered, he said.

“If you want to enter a hot zone to investigate what the spill is, you have to be trained at least to the technician level,” Trump said.

“Before you enter the hot zone, you have to have decontamination set up. It’s two in, two out — that’s state law.”

A minimum of eight, trained and equipped, must be on the scene, before the hot zone, the one nearest the spill, is penetrated.

Hazardous material leaks entail two other zones. The second, less threatening, is the warm zone in which decontamination occurs.

A third section is the cold zone, devoid of any chemical exposure.

“We realize that we have those competing interests,” Trump said.

“There are commercial interests and the state has interests to keep roadways and stuff open. We’re trying our best to find ways to safely and very quickly identify the chemicals. It could happen right here on Exit 44. We could tie it up just as bad. But if we’re able to have our guys to go into a hot zone, quickly identify it and then mitigate it, we can probably minimize those problems.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com