Little General Store Propane Explosion - US Chemical Safety and ...

Little General Store September 2008
valve. No one was injured. Students remained at a church across the street until parents arrived to take
them home.
1.3.2 Incident Responders
The hazardous materials team involved in this incident has responded to several propane incidents in the
last year, all of which have been vapor releases. They receive technical information from propane service
technicians, but take release mitigation actions themselves. To protect propane service technicians from
entering the release area, the team uses methods including
• taking digital photographs of tank damage so that technicians can see and assess the damage on a
remote laptop computer,
• bringing similar tanks or other equipment to the scene so that technicians can point out features
the team will find on the incident tank, and
• escorting technicians to the edge of the secured release area to point out potential leak sources for
team members.
Additionally, the hazardous materials response team trains local 911 operators to use follow-up questions
to elicit needed information from callers reporting hazardous materials incidents. In this incident, as in
Ghent, the 911 operator conveyed little information to the fire department. However, unlike Ghent
responders, the first fire engine company to arrive immediately recognized the danger posed by the
release’s proximity to a building and called for hazardous materials backup.
The propane service technicians responding to this incident were branch employees of a national propane
company that uses CETP. In the event of a propane emergency, whichever technicians are working
nearest the incident stop work immediately and respond. Since these responders are all trained with
CETP, they are familiar with what types of incidents they can mitigate using normal propane procedures.
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