As part of CN's Responsible Care partnership with the North American chemical industry, we hold over 100 TRANSCAER ( Transportation Community Awareness and Emergency Response ) seminars and workshops annually across Canada and the United States, at no charge to attendees.

1. CN hosts the very
successful Calgary
TRANSCAER 2014
By Terry Litchfield
October 1, 2014
In June of this year, Karl Tirschmann, CN
Regional Dangerous Goods Officer ; Terry
Litchfield, TRANSCAER consultant ; and David
Comly, Safety Manager for Northwest Tank
Lines ; met with senior management of the
Calgary Fire Department. The subject of the
meeting was to propose a firefighter and
industry hazmat training workshop - to be
hosted by Canadian National Railways,
Northwest Tank Lines and members of the
Prairie Region TRANSCAER Committee (
PRTC ). As part of CN's Responsible Care
partnership with the North American chemical
industry, we hold over 100 TRANSCAER (
Transportation Community Awareness and
Emergency Response ) seminars and
workshops annually across Canada and the
United States, at no charge to attendees. This
particular Calgary training workshop was
planned to be one of the biggest and most
diverse that the PRTC had undertaken for quite
awhile, and they were seeking CFD buy in.
Brain Ladds, CFD Hazmat Coordinator and
other fire department representatives were
enthusiastically in support, so the planning went
ahead.
On September 8th ( four days before the
workshop was planned to take place in CN's
Sarcee Rail Yard ), a record snowstorm hit the
Calgary area - 10 centimeters of snow fell
within 24 hours, seriously interrupting traffic and
power supply across central Alberta. Despite
this
potential setback, Karl and his PRTC team
workshop scheduled for later that week, Friday
September 12th and Saturday the 13th.
A one half acre site in our Sarcee Rail yard
was set up with six separate hazmat training
stations, a big outdoor tent for classroom
training sessions, and numerous pieces of
transportation and emergency response
equipment - including the CCPX 911 safety
training rail car, an operating CN locomotive,
three chemical tank trailers, emergency
response vans and trailers, tote bins and other
small hazmat shipping containers,
environmental air monitoring vehicles,
chemical foam suppression units etc. etc. In
total over 250 people attended this well run two
day firefighter training workshop. That number
included firefighters from 16 different Alberta (
volunteer and career ) fire departments,
federal and provincial government regulators,
Calgary area customers of CN`s and other
hazmat shippers, and numerous
representatives from The Railway Assoc. of
Canada ( RAC ), The Chemistry Industry
Assoc. ( CIAC ), The Chemical Distributors
Assoc.( CACD ) , The Canadian Assoc. of
Petroleum Producers ( CAPP ) , and the LPG
Emergency Response Corp.( LPGERC ).
Kudo`s go to all the Dangerous Goods Officers
that work across CN network and their fellow
PRTC members for providing a very effective
and timely community outreach workshop on
the safe handling and transportation of
dangerous goods.