League of
Women Voters of the Upper Valley
Hanover,
NH, Norwich, VT and neighboring towns
updated 2/14/05 Home Page
>> talks at recent League forums
Pesticides, Poisons and
People: Risks and Responses
Annual
Brown Bag Lunch Series, February 2005
Community
Response to a Hazardous Material Event
Kevin Geiger, a Senior Planner at
Two Rivers Ottaquechee
Regional Planning Commission, referred us to the web site of the
commission:
http://trorc.org/ from which these sections are taken. These cover
the issues of his talk. In his presentation, he stressed
the present need for preparing by having training for fire departments
in our towns. This requires funding.
From the Two Rivers Ottaquechee
Regional Planning Commission web site:
Emergency Management
Emergency Management is the field of dealing with emergencies,
especially large human-caused or natural disasters. The field is
usually broken into four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and
recovery. TRORC plays a role in all of these phases, but we are
especially active in the first two, since they more heavily related to
planning.
Mitigation involves actions that lessen the likelihood that a disaster
will cause damage, or reduce the severity of the damage. We help towns
to mitigate the effects of disasters by encouraging disaster-resistant
development that keeps homes and businesses out of harm's way, such as
avoiding floodplains. We also work with towns to ensure that their
infrastructure, especially roads and drainage, will stand up to
expected hazards such as heavy rainstorms.
Preparedness activities get towns ready for anticipated disaster
events. We help towns to write basic emergency plans, apply for grants
for equipment, request training from State and Federal sources and
participate in exercises or drills designed to practice response
activities and to test operational plans. Having well trained and
equipped responders with good plans and plenty of practice is the best
way for towns to prepare for those disasters that cannot be reasonably
avoided.
During the response phase in the midst of disasters, we generally work
from the sidelines, ensuring that Vermont Emergency Management is aware
of damages to towns and occasionally working with the media or at the
State's Emergency Operations Center. Recovery begins as the immediate
response winds down, and our role here involves assisting towns in
obtaining and managing federal aid and creating mitigation projects to
lessen the damage the next time.
rorc.org>emergency management>disaster information by type
Emergency Management
Disaster Information by Type of Hazard
The future disasters we will face can be lessened by taking mitigation
actions now, educating ourselves about what types of hazards we might
face and have historically faced, and undertaking simple preparedness
measures. The information below includes very brief discussions about
specific disaster types that could threaten the region and state, and
provides links to more in-depth sites.
Technological Hazards/HAZMAT
"Technological hazards" is the emergency field's term to cover
accidental hazards created by man-made substances, facilities or
actions that threaten people or property. This includes such things as
train derailments, airplane crashes, vehicle crashes, hazardous
materials spills or leaks, explosions, radiation hazards, noxious or
poisonous fumes, dam failure and structure collapse. Since Vermont has
busy highways and Interstates, active rail lines, fuel storage
facilities, a nuclear plant, large dams and hazardous materials storage
and transport there is the potential for all of these types of events.
In fact, though these types of events are uncommon, they are not
unknown, including several derailments, a propane rail car explosion in
Fairlee in 1974 and a multitude of hazardous materials spills. National
Information on Hazardous Materials, as well as information regarding
the Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant is available from the links
below.
HAZMAT Safety - http://hazmat.dot.gov/ -
VEM: Request info. on VT Yankee -
http://www.dps.state.vt.us/vem/request.html
Terrorism and Civil Hazards
Terrorism and civil hazards include actions that people intentionally
do to threaten lives and property. They may range from a single person
on a shooting rampage, to a cyberattack that harms computer systems to
the organized use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). WMD events
could involve chemical, biological, explosive or radioactive weapons.
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