SUPERIOR – New safety precautions and emergency response procedures were discussed during the Local Emergency Preparedness Council’s meeting on Thursday, February 7.

One of the serious concerns was how the community would respond to a train derailment igniting a fire by chemicals or other means. Mary Jo Barry, a member of the council, wondered how emergency services would handle such a scenario and whether they would be prepared for it with sufficient training.

John Woodland, chief of the Superior Volunteer Fire Department, said train derailment fires were a scenario considered for training exercises. He also said it was something he thought about and wanted to prevent. However, at the last department training session they practiced responding to a bus crash instead.

There was some disagreement over whether this exercise was a higher priority than a derailment. Barry said this was an exercise the department had never done before and questioned if it was a good use of time. Woodland explained he was concerned about derailments and had put the scenario up as something to consider in training. It was decided the crews already knew what they needed to do.

“While the mechanics of a forest fire over another type of fire are different on some levels, the management techniques and where you go for help are pretty similar,” said Woodland. “The places I’m going to go for help on something like a train derailment with a big fire are going to be pretty similar to some of the places I’m going to go for help for a forest fire.”

He estimated the emergency resources would be strained by a large accident more than tanker rail cars catching fire. Woodland said the fire was simple because the fire department knew they could not put it out. They would just contain the fire until it burned out. The risk of toxins remaining in the area was a possibility and the council figured some extra preparation would be good.

In an update on the ambulance services, Joe Calnan, representative of the ambulance personnel, said they had some new vehicles to help with their jobs.

According to Calnan, the transition from Life Flight to a company from Spokane is expected to go smoothly. He said the new company vowed there would be no disruption in services during the transition.

A new fixed-wing airplane and helicopter will be available through the new company. The helicopter is larger and is expected to be able to carry two patients at once. Also, where Life Flight took off from St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, the new company will be based out of the Missoula airport and able to respond faster. Otherwise, the services should remain fairly similar.

“There’s not going to be much change on the surface except increased passengers,” said Calnan. “Their fixed-wing is supposed to be bigger, better rotary mechanism…For us out here in the rural [areas] it’s not going to be that big a change.”

The final update came from the Department of Transportation and centered on discussions of detours during an accident. There have been some problems, which resulted from issues with communication.

One accident was noted as a good example where the entire westbound interstate was blocked off to traffic. The cause of this was from the various emergency vehicles using different radio channels to communicate with their own people, but not with others. This left them unable to coordinate their actions.

The council determined the best way to handle the problem and keep repeats from happening was to go through central dispatch to cross communicate or name a universal frequency for everyone to use.

“Worst case scenario, if you can’t get us, if you can get central dispatch and request us to go up through Gold (a radio channel code name) that’s what we’ll do,” said Woodland. “I don’t want to do detours, I don’t want to do traffic stuff, I’m happy to see you there.”