Study of hazardous material transportation in Fairfax County: Response of emergency personnel and risk analyses (Virginia)

This research involves the construction, manipulation and analysis of a Hazmat database containing the essential attributes of all the Hazmat incidents in the Fairfax County area over the years 1993–1997. The resulting FC/FRD Emergency Response Database for that interval contains 2523 Hazmat transportation related incidents. In Fairfax County, the great majority of the Hazmat transportation incidents are automobile, truck and pipeline Hazmat spills. During 1993–97, the FC/FRD Emergency Response Database indicate that Hazmat incidents related to truck transportation, automobile transportation, and pipeline incidents were 37, 81, and 344 incidents per year respectively. Approximately 92% of all the pipeline incidents involved natural gas. Approximately 67% of the Hazmat incidents occurred during the weekdays and 33% during the weekends.; There is no reported Hazmat transportation by railroad in and out of Critical Hazard and other Hazard Facilities or tank farms in Fairfax County. It has been reported that most railroad Hazmat spills are small and occur in railyards.; There is no record of Hazmat transportation by barges along the Potomac River, adjacent to Fairfax County. Half of the “water incidents” are incorrectly recorded, and were actually natural gas pipeline incidents and have been modified and excluded from waterway incidents.; The FC/FRD Emergency Response Database recorded two airplane Hazmat incidents, but both were incorrectly recorded, and are actually incidents of air contamination.; By using the FC/FRD Emergency Response Database, it is possible to compare the extent of environmental contamination with the types of Hazmat transportation. Evidently, air contamination is caused primarily by pipeline incidents. Ground contamination is caused primarily by auto and truck incidents. In almost half of the Hazmat incidents, no environmental contamination was observed.; An Emergency Information System called EIS/GEM was chosen to be the best candidate to effectively manage crises and particularly Hazmat incidents in the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (FC/FRD). This software has the capability of quickly and accurately plot Hazmat incidents acquired by FC/FRD Emergency Response personnel, characterize the incidents chemically, and incorporate the incident attributes of the FC/FRD Emergency Response Database for historical incidents to create a “picture” of Hazmat transportation and incidents in Fairfax County based on historical data. This software has been installed, configured, and customized according to the FC/FRD needs. The FC/FRD database and the Fairfax County mapping system were incorporated into the new software.