BALTIMORE — 30 Baltimore City firefighters per day, 120 in all this week, are combing over a CSX train outside the B&O Train Museum that’s not carrying freight—-just knowledge about what dangers it may hold if it ever leaves the rails.
“It’s specialized,” said Baltimore City Fire Capt. Michael Winn, “You have to have a very diverse knowledge of thousands of chemicals, thousands of ways to treat it, thousands of ways to evacuate the area so it’s very complex.”
The CSX rail system covers more than 21,000 miles of track in 26 states carrying goods essential to every day life, but potentially deadly when compromised in transit.
“You know if a train like this happened to derail, it’s difficult to see from the side for the lay person what’s inside these tank cars,” said CSX’s Bryan Tucker, “We’re providing information to the first responders how they can immediately access what’s in that particular car and how they should manage it.”
While it was a Norfolk Southern train, which derailed in Ohio spilling all those hazardous chemicals back in February, CSX has been providing training similar to this, there in the aftermath.
“It was a direct request from Governor DeWine,” said Tucker, “Governor DeWine reached out to our CEO who happens to be from Ohio and we asked what we could do to help and the governor asked for additional training so we added some trainings in Ohio.”
Here, they’re planning for the future—-gathering knowledge about each type of rail car, its systems and its possible cargo to protect those they are sworn to as well as themselves.
“When we show up, we don’t want to become the victim,” said Winn, “We want to try to mitigate the incident and save lives as much as possible, and we can’t do that when we become victims.”
