OHIO — Norfolk Southern held a training session for first responders at its site in Bellevue. Participants learned the inner workings of trains, including how to kill the power.
“Everything coming from the battery on the engine, that would help kill everything,” said an instructor at the event.
Some firefighters came from towns with heavy train traffic. The Hamler Fire Chief Kevin Niemeyer said his town gets around 70 trains a day. He’s done train walkthroughs before, but never in a thorough way like this.
“Probably the biggest is identifying the cars. How you can tell what’s in em,” said Niemeyer. “Where’s everything at. Where it’s located. How you can control the situation and maybe mitigate the problem.”
The first responders came from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. For some, this is the closest they’ve ever been to a train car.
“A lot of fire departments or firefighters or other emergency responders may not otherwise get this close unless it was for an incident,” said Connor Spielmaker of Norfolk Southern.
This is part of Norfolk Southern’s O.A.R. program which stands for operation, awareness and response. It involves a train that is used to educate first responders on how trains work. They’ll be taking this train to 12 stops in their 22-state network. Four of those stops are in Ohio. This comes after a string of Norfolk Southern train derailments, including the derailment in East Palestine that caused 38 train cars to veer off the tracks, releasing toxic chemicals. Officials at Norfolk Southern said this program has existed before the derailment in East Palestine.
“This gives them the information on what to do, how to do it, and more importantly, who to contact with when that’s happened,” Spielman said.
Norfolk Southern is adding a few new stops to its training program. It will also build a full-time training facility dedicated to teaching first responders on handling train incidents. Norfolk Southern said it will be built near East Palestine.
