Fairfax, VA – Ninety-eight percent of U.S. fire chiefs responding to a survey consider hazardous-materials placards critical and essential to their emergency response, according to the survey conducted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC).
The removal of hazardous-materials placards from railcars and other containers continues to be a topic of discussion among homeland security officials. The IAFC opposes the termination of the current placarding system until a replacement system has been demonstrated to be effective and the fire service has been fully trained in its use.
IAFC sent the survey to 7,340 of its members to determine the fire service’s reliance on placards, signs on containers carrying hazardous materials that tell first responders what substances are inside.
Key findings of the survey:
- Ninety-eight percent of respondents said they use hazardous-materials placards in their emergency response.
- Nearly every respondent replied that hazardous materials placards are critical or very important to their operations, with 70 percent responding “critical” and 28 percent responding “very important.”
- Virtually no respondents indicated that placards are not very important or not a factor at all in their operations.
- Only 12 percent of respondents said they are aware of even potential alternatives to placards.
“The IAFC’s survey underscores the importance of these placards to effective response,” said IAFC President Chief Bob DiPoli. “Without them, America’s first responders would have no idea what kinds of substances they are dealing with, posing a tremendous danger to America’s communities and to the responders that protect them.”
Survey respondents indicated that without haz-mat placards, the lives of the people surrounding a haz-mat incident and responding firefighters would be in danger. Many respondents also said that responses would take longer and costs would increase because they would have to treat every haz-mat incident as a worst-case scenario.
“标语牌被放置[放在容器上]因为需要。没有他们，在研究的研究中，呼叫将会延长，以确定内容，花费更多的金钱，冒险更多的生活，“一个受访者写道。
另一位受访者写道，删除标语牌，“会导致我们改变我们如何评估响应早期阶段的风险。这将导致保护人，财产和环境的延误。它也可能导致非常昂贵的入射行动，例如不需要的疏散。“
First responders use placards to determine the type and level of response to hazardous-materials incidents-spills, explosions, accidents. The type of material in the incident dictates the size of the evacuation zone, the level of personal protective equipment, the need for additional or specialized personnel, and more. Hazardous-materials incidents occur all over the country, in rural areas and large metropolitan cities. Recent incidents occurred in Industry, Calif. (March 8), Salt Lake City (March 6) and Graniteville, S.C. (January 6).
关于调查
The IAFC sent the survey electronically to 7,340 fire chiefs and officers. As of March 9, 2005, 988 individuals responded for a response rate of 13 percent. A private, third-party vendor hosted the Web-based questionnaire and provided real-time tabulation of results plus the capture of text responses to the long response or “comment” questions on the survey. The intent of the survey was not to obtain data for statistical or scientific purposes; rather, the intent was to obtain a snapshot of the fire service’s reliance on haz mat placards.
