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Emergency Responders in Texas and Louisiana To Receive Emergency Preparedness Training From Chemical and Rail Safety Experts


WEBWIRE

Emergency responders in Texas and Louisiana will be visiting their local railroad yards over the next three weeks to participate in a chemical rail transportation safety training initiative presented by Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and The Dow Chemical Company (Dow). Traveling across the two states Oct. 16 through Nov. 2, the TRANSCAER training tour will bring chemical and rail industry professionals into select cities to provide free community awareness and emergency response training to local responders and community leaders through hands-on demonstrations and educational seminars designed to promote emergency preparedness.

Working with TRANSCAER (Transportation Community Awareness and Emergency Response), the voluntary national outreach group the companies co-founded twenty years ago as part of their shared commitment to the safe and secure rail transportation of chemical materials, UP and Dow will visit nine cities in Texas and Louisiana along their shared chemical routes. Totaling nearly 500 miles, the tour launches Oct. 16 in Freeport, Texas, and will travel west making scheduled stops in Texas City, Houston, LaPorte and Beaumont. The tour will then make four stops in Louisiana, visiting Lake Charles, Livonia, and Donaldsonville before completing the tour in New Orleans Nov. 2.

“Through TRANSCAER, first responders have the opportunity to learn firsthand from chemical and rail transportation experts about the safe movement of chemicals through their communities,” said Lou Wagner, General Director, Chemical Transportation Safety, Union Pacific Railroad. “Emergency responders play a critical role in protecting the public’s safety and security, and we will continue to bring them the vital information and training they need to prepare for and respond to a chemical transportation incident.”

Established in 1986 by a consortium of companies from the chemical and rail industries led by Dow and UP, TRANSCAER is a voluntary national outreach effort that welcomes representatives from the chemical manufacturing, transportation, distributor, and emergency response industries, as well as the government, to assist with educational and training initaitives. Dow and UP created this collaborative education and training resource within the framework of their joint commitments to chemical transportation safety and security, which the companies formalized through a memorandum of cooperation issued earlier this year.

Both companies also are active participants in the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care® program, the global chemical industry’s environmental, health and safety (EH&S) initiative to drive continuous improvement in performance. It achieves this objective by meeting and going beyond legislative and regulatory compliance, and by adopting cooperative and voluntary initiatives with government and other stakeholders.

For Dow, TRANSCAER also is an integral part of the company’s long-standing commitment to local protection of human health and the environment, which today serves as a key foundational tenet of Dow’s 2015 Sustainability Goals, announced in 2006.

“We take very seriously our obligation to responsibly manufacture and move our products – the chemicals that are the essential building blocks for most of the products people use every day,” said Henry Ward, Director of Transportation Safety and Security, The Dow Chemical Company. “Rail is the safest mode by which to move these materials, so we are committed to working with UP and our other rail carriers to support the safe and secure transportation of these products. TRANSCAER Training Tours are an important part of that commitment.”

Additional key participants donating their time and resources to the tour include the Firefighers Education and Training Foundation and CHEMTREC® (Chemical Transportation Emergency Center). More information about the UP/Dow TRANSCAER Training Tour, including schedule and training details, can be found at http://www.dow.com/transcaertours.



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