CN hosts the very

successful Calgary

TRANSCAER 2014

By Terry Litchfield

October 1, 2014

In June of this year, Karl Tirschmann, CN

Regional Dangerous Goods Officer ; Terry

Litchfield, TRANSCAER consultant ; and David

Comly, Safety Manager for Northwest Tank

Lines ; met with senior management of the

Calgary Fire Department. The subject of the

meeting was to propose a firefighter and

industry hazmat training workshop - to be

hosted by Canadian National Railways,

Northwest Tank Lines and members of the

Prairie Region TRANSCAER Committee (

PRTC ). As part of CN's Responsible Care

partnership with the North American chemical

industry, we hold over 100 TRANSCAER (

Transportation Community Awareness and

Emergency Response ) seminars and

workshops annually across Canada and the

United States, at no charge to attendees. This

particular Calgary training workshop was

planned to be one of the biggest and most

diverse that the PRTC had undertaken for quite

awhile, and they were seeking CFD buy in.

Brain Ladds, CFD Hazmat Coordinator and

other fire department representatives were

enthusiastically in support, so the planning went

ahead.

On September 8th ( four days before the

workshop was planned to take place in CN's

Sarcee Rail Yard ), a record snowstorm hit the

Calgary area - 10 centimeters of snow fell

within 24 hours, seriously interrupting traffic and

power supply across central Alberta. Despite

this

potential setback, Karl and his PRTC team

workshop scheduled for later that week, Friday

September 12th and Saturday the 13th.

A one half acre site in our Sarcee Rail yard

was set up with six separate hazmat training

stations, a big outdoor tent for classroom

training sessions, and numerous pieces of

transportation and emergency response

equipment - including the CCPX 911 safety

training rail car, an operating CN locomotive,

three chemical tank trailers, emergency

response vans and trailers, tote bins and other

small hazmat shipping containers,

environmental air monitoring vehicles,

chemical foam suppression units etc. etc. In

total over 250 people attended this well run two

day firefighter training workshop. That number

included firefighters from 16 different Alberta (

volunteer and career ) fire departments,

federal and provincial government regulators,

Calgary area customers of CN`s and other

hazmat shippers, and numerous

representatives from The Railway Assoc. of

Canada ( RAC ), The Chemistry Industry

Assoc. ( CIAC ), The Chemical Distributors

Assoc.( CACD ) , The Canadian Assoc. of

Petroleum Producers ( CAPP ) , and the LPG

Emergency Response Corp.( LPGERC ).

Kudo`s go to all the Dangerous Goods Officers

that work across CN network and their fellow

PRTC members for providing a very effective

and timely community outreach workshop on

the safe handling and transportation of

dangerous goods.