From Local 3 News: After news of a February 3rd train derailment near East Palestine, Ohio resulting in a fire that released dangerous chemicals i
From Local 3 News: After news of a February 3rd train derailment near East Palestine, Ohio resulting in a fire that released dangerous chemicals into the environment, and Dalton residents wondered if the same thing could happen in their community. Local public safety agencies are trained and prepared to respond if it does.
Todd Pangle, the City of Dalton’s fire chief, recently hosted a meeting with his counterpart from the Whitfield County Fire Department, Chief Ed O’Brien and officials from the Whitfield County and Georgia Emergency Management Agencies to discuss preparedness for these types of events. Chief Pangle noted that the Dalton Fire Department maintains extensive equipment and supplies for hazmat situations, and Whitfield County’s fire department also has a supply of equipment and can call on Dalton or other local and state agencies to assist through mutual aid when the need arises.
“We’re always working on (preparedness),” Chief O’Brien said. “There is so much pre-planning that we do where we look at the businesses that we have, seeing what we have coming in on the rails or on the road to be prepared… for hazardous materials, there are three levels of certification through the state. You have hazmat awareness level, hazmat operations level, and the highest certification is hazmat technician. All of the county firefighters are at the ops level and we have ten or twelve technicians. We maintain that annually,”
“We have eight (hazmat technicians) per shift with the city,” said Chief Pangle. “24 technicians among the three work shifts, and we have two others that work a five-day work week. We have a designated hazmat team and we require our team to train together at least once a quarter so that we exceed the required amount of training (required by the state of Georgia). That way, we’re getting our hazmat stuff out, we’re rotating our stock and different things like that.”
The close working relationships that the leaders of the two fire departments as well as the other local public safety and emergency management agencies maintain is one of the biggest strengths the community has when disaster strikes. These relationships are built through not just working closely day to day at incident scenes, but also through the frequent meetings of Whitfield County’s Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC). The LEPC meets bi-monthly with representatives from each local police or fire agency as well as the Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency (WCEMA) and Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA). Safety personnel and managers from local manufacturing businesses also attend the meetings.
The LEPC and the local public safety agencies created and continually maintain the Whitfield County Hazard Mitigation Plan. That plan identifies known technological or environmental hazards present in the community and develops strategies to reduce the risks for community residents. The LEPC and local public safety agencies also plan large scale training exercises together every few years to put their planning to the test.
“One of the big things that people forget about is that you’ve got the fire department on scene dealing with the hazard, but you’ve got to think about the sheltering and the evacuation and so that’s where emergency management is going ot work with GEMA to provide those resources,” WCEMA director David Metcalf said. “We’re going to start reaching out to the Red Cross and whoever we can reach out to start helping with those evacuations and sheltering and getting them in place. I think that was one of the downfalls in Ohio is it just didn’t happen quickly enough.”
Public safety officials have been watching the story in Ohio unfold closely, looking for the lessons they can apply to the Whitfield County community’s plans. Chief Pangle noted that if something like this were to happen in Dalton, they would need to involve the local and state EMA quickly to access the resources available to them.
The local public safety agencies are prepared to respond if a similar event were to happen in Dalton, and they are continually working to strengthen their plans and relationships to ensure the safety of the community.
“When I see something like that happen, my thoughts go to the fact something like that could happen here,” Chief Pangle said. “I know that as I was watching and thinking, I was paying particular attention to exactly what kinds of resources they were able to amass and in what time frame they were able to do it… if we have something like that, how quickly can we involve our local EMA as well as the state level EMA, because we have some resources available to us through the CST as well that you definitely would want to get there.”
“I’m not saying I want it to happen tomorrow but if it does happen in the city of Dalton I know that I’m surrounded with a bunch of support,” Chief Pangle said, with agreement from all of the other public safety leaders in the room.
