The snow is deep over the rails but now is the time to start preparing for the season. In reviewing items needed for operations, I took a look at our emergency procedures. They need expanding and updating. Rather than reinvent the wheel, would anyone be willing to share their emergency procedures?
I’m looking to cover:
• Medical Emergencies
• Train Breakdowns
• Derailments
• Grade Crossing Accidents
• Call Tree – Phone Number Directories
• Fire – Ground, Locomotive (Steam and Diesel), Equipment
• Weather
• Media
• Crowd Control

Did I miss anything?

Ideas and suggestions are welcome, electronic documents even more so.

Relocation of visitors and staff in case of ????. Toxic spill, fire etc may force you to relocate persons from your property. A shelter in place plan might be useful depending on your set-up. Plan of escape due to Mother Nature might be handy also. Get with your area's (city, county) Emergency Management person. She/he will have a lot of good information to give to you and might have plans you can modify to work for your situation.

Mark, check your PM's

Mark,

You may already know these items. But I offer them for others who may also be thinking of updating their incident response procedures.

Make sure that the emergency responders (medical, fire, etc.) are familiar with access to your location and facilities.

Determine who is to be the spokesman to the media for the organization if an incident happens. And provide instructions to all the staff as who this person is.

Weather:

Buy a NOAA weather radio and program it for your location for weather alerts. Since some of you are in quite remote locations and NWR coverage isn't 100 percent, coverage maps here:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/nwrbro.htm

Contact the "Warning Coordination Meteorologist" at your local National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office (122 of 'em).

http://www.weather.gov/organization.php#maps

They may be willing to come out and talk to your staff/volunteers or point you to materials to set up a emergency plan, or even put your organization through a version of the StormReady program:

http://www.weather.gov/stormready/

Where would you put your visitors if you knew there was a tornado bearing down on a Sunday afternoon? Wouldn't you want as much warning as you can get if that were to happen? What if you are in an area that could be impacted by a flash flood? Do you have a policy to pull visitors, crew and volunteers regarding lightning in the area?

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/

Just some thoughts.

Bob Bunge
Office of the Chief Information Officer
National Weather Service