Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
#46: Top 4 Incident Command & HAZMAT Must-Do's From Industry Experts
The podcast episode titled "First fifteen minutes of a chemical leak top four things" provides a detailed and informative discussion on the crucial steps to be taken during the initial moments of a chemical leak emergency. The episode is hosted by Joe and Jen, who draw upon their extensive experience in handling over 480 incidents, including leaks involving various hazardous materials such as sanitation chemicals and refrigerants.
The hosts begin by emphasizing the urgency of the situation, urging listeners to buckle in for a comprehensive discussion. They acknowledge the fast-paced nature of emergency responses and encourage the use of the pause button for listeners to absorb the information effectively.
The core focus of the episode is on the first fifteen minutes upon arriving at the scene of a chemical leak. The hosts stress the importance of data gathering during this critical period. Whether arriving from the office or home, the goal is to obtain as much information as possible by asking key questions about the location, nature of the substance, and potential impact on individuals. The hosts caution against errors that may arise from a lack of careful consideration and advise listeners to remain calm and collected.
Drawing from their experiences in live leak situations, the hosts emphasize the need to slow down despite the urgency, highlighting that this approach has proven effective in their 480 recorded events. They underscore the significance of meticulous data collection, involving managers, and performing various job tasks.
The episode then transitions into the next crucial step: putting together a plan and gaining control of the situation. This includes involving relevant personnel, utilizing monitoring devices, and establishing evacuation plans. The hosts stress the simultaneous nature of these tasks and emphasize the importance of technical, customized, and in-depth training for effective management.
Listeners are taken through a detailed list of tasks that need to be addressed simultaneously, including assessing for victims, deciding on evacuation routes, performing head counts, and considering weather conditions. The hosts delve into the complexities of managing external factors such as truck traffic, blocking exits, and coordinating with regional hazmat teams.
The hosts also touch upon the importance of following established procedures and the limitations of relying solely on standard operating procedures (SOPs). They stress the need for the right training and systems to manage the dynamic and unpredictable nature of chemical emergencies.
The episode concludes with a brief mention of the hosts' company's online training resources and invites listeners to explore more in-depth information on chemical spill management. They also promote their upcoming speaking engagement at the IAR in March, encouraging early bird registrations.
The episode covers the following topics:
Chemical leak response strategy
Rapid incident assessment
Effective emergency response
Hazmat incident management
Crisis management in chemical spills
Comprehensive hazmat training
Coordination with external agencies
Conflict resolution in emergency scenarios
Adverse weather considerations in chemical emergencies
Continuous training for hazmat teams
Hazardous materials incident
Real-world experiences in hazmat response
In-depth chemical spill training resources
Chemical leak emergency response
Hazardous material incident management
Standard operating procedures
Emergency response training
Incident command structure in hazmat incidents
Real-world experiences in hazmat response
Evacuation planning in chemical emergencies
External agency coordination in hazmat incidents
Planning for sustained response efforts
Online hazmat training resources
First 15 minutes of a chemical leak Top four things.
Speaker 2:Here we go.
Speaker 1:Here we go. ["totally Beautiful"]. All right, here we go today. Show up. We run a lot of command, probably 480. Something leaks. We've been part of somewhere or another, some of them literally while I'm standing there, started.
Speaker 2:All we're trying to say is buckle in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to go.
Speaker 2:Use your pause button if you need to, because we're going to move through this one.
Speaker 1:We've got a lot to cover 15 minutes here chemical leak. Here we go First 15 minutes. First thing you want to look at is what Jen.
Speaker 2:You're arriving on scene, whether you're coming from your office, you're coming from your house, wherever you're going, your goal is to get as much data as you can. If you can and you're driving in, I would get on the phone and start asking a whole bunch of questions to try and just get where is it? What is it? What's going on? Who's impacted? You have victims, so that you're just trying to gather all as much information as you can, much data as you can, so you can start formulating a plan in your mind.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. That's first thing. You got to get all the data. If you mess up and you don't think it through correctly, you're going to start making errors. You got to get your data. Calm yourself down. If you've ever been with me on a live leak, I don't ever get excited. You have to think because you're getting ready to do a bunch of stuff in the next 14 minutes.
Speaker 2:That's right. So there's a lot of data that you're going to be trying to get out to people. Ask managers to help you do some different things. They're going to have different job tasks that you're doing. The biggest thing that you need to do is slow it down. That's the best advice that we can give. You is, at 480 events that we've run, the best advice that we can give is slow it down immediately.
Speaker 1:So now the next one is now you've got your data, the next thing you got to do is you got to start putting a plan together and grabbing all your stuff.
Speaker 2:You got to get control.
Speaker 1:People yeah, get control. Get some people involved, get some meters involved. Find out who's actually evacuated. Are you calling agencies, are you calling fire and what is you got to get that structure started being built around you so you can do the next 15 minutes or the next time we'll talk about it, but you've got to get that structure built around you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically all of these things are going to be going on at the same time, simultaneous. So this is where you find out if your training was technical enough, customized enough, in depth enough. You're going to find out if you train enough managers during this 15 minutes. So here's kind of what's going to be going on all at one time. You're going to be finding out. Do we have victims? How do we treat them? Are we evacuating? Did we go out the right route? Did we go upwind of the leak? We're doing head counts. Do we have anybody? Are we going to allow people to do sweeps of employee welfare areas or not? Is everybody just?
Speaker 1:evacuating. Now it's freezing outside. Oh my God, moving to a different shelter area, yeah did I figure out where I can evacuate?
Speaker 2:Is the fence line far enough or is that too close still? Just because it's the property line doesn't mean that that's evacuated far enough. If it's adverse weather, do we have a plan for that?
Speaker 1:I got all these truckers trying to come in and I got to stop the roads, start blocking exits.
Speaker 2:Maybe I have to move whoever is on property either loading or unloading. So we've got to figure that out. This is where you're going to start doing your LAPC calls, Any area businesses that you've got to notify. You've got to make sure-.
Speaker 1:Cause I don't want to be the neighbor next door and find out and look out and like why are they all evacuating? What's that coming? Our?
Speaker 2:way. Yeah, and my age back now. I got to figure out if I can shut that down. We've got to maybe make calls to our regional or area hazmat. We've got to be getting gear out. Maybe We've got to be doing callbacks to get the Calvary here. So we're calling corporate, if we have them, and other managers if we have them, other hazmat team members potentially, if we have that going on and this is all like at a three or four minute period. Yep, we've got-.
Speaker 1:And we're getting control of this variable and we're starting to say what can I really do when you did your arrival on site and you got all your data.
Speaker 2:If you figure out we're already over the reportable quantity, you got to be banking those phone calls. You've got to be getting on that as well and that should be designated people that have information to give very specific data to the folks on the phone about the reportable quantities. If we're over and what's the scenario is cause, they're going to have lots of questions for you. This is also when you're going to be doing some of your procedures and starting to pull those out and, if you've got questions, if your procedures are in depth enough, that's going to be episode 17 on SOP, so you can find out if those have the data that you're going to need in this 15 minute period of time or if you're going to have to scrap those and formulate a document and plan while this 15 minutes is also going on.
Speaker 1:Yes. So people say to me why don't we use an SOP? Because it's not addressing all this.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have the staff.
Speaker 1:You got to have the right training and the right systems to manage this, or it becomes crazy. And when it comes crazy, it just starts going. So now you're in the number three. And number three what am I going to do? Who am I going to send in? What meter am I actually turning on? Using what valve am I going to control? What am I actually getting ready to do now? Now I've got all the data, now I'm getting ready to do an action. And when I could do that action, I bet I have a pretty clear plan, including maybe just click a button on a computer and that's what I'm doing. But I've got. Now. Number three is my first attack plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got a hat and so and by the way, just throwing out this disclaimer, this is our opinion, joe and I have worked well over it in some capacity there be an onsite, like you mentioned, and actually physically running command with the plant or the location, or on the phone, as it's going down over showing up an hour later or a few hours, I mean helping out on the back end after the event has been completed.
Speaker 2:Over 480 leaks. Sanitation chemicals, all kinds of chemicals. This includes refrigeration and hazmat. So these are our opinions, but they are rooted in those live events in those live events. So take it how you want.
Speaker 1:I said now. So now you're going to get ready to go, do your task. I'm going to turn off a valve, I'm going to sign these two people to go, and when do these two things? Now I got to think about. All right, I've got my entire plan together, I'm ready to execute. If you do not think through that first step, that first plan of going in, it could make you be there seven days. You have to make sure you're right and counter check with some people around you to make sure we're good to go. Don't rely on you or me.
Speaker 2:Sometimes when I get my call, all the IC calls, say when we get there, we get ready to do this.
Speaker 1:What do you think? And I'm like, yep, and then we go.
Speaker 2:They get through all of that stuff about evacuation and headcounts and do we have victims and managing that? And then when they give us the call, it's hey, this is what we're thinking. Our SOPs maybe don't capture this. We don't have a task procedure on this. We don't have anything.
Speaker 1:What do you think?
Speaker 2:Because the biggest thing we don't want to do is freelance and not run it by anybody and have no checks and balances when things are crazy, because that is something that can't be defended if things go the wrong way later on.
Speaker 1:Now we got four. Four is to me still within the first 15 minutes, but your fourth plan is what am I going to do in the next hour if this goes bad? So anytime I say, yes, I agree, let's send in team one to do task one. I'm already thinking if it does not work, just because you got data, what the leak is, don't mean that's the leak. Yeah, just because you got data, it's the problem is don't mean that's the problem. You may get in and find us completely. I fought leaks where we knew it was a compressor and we get it. It's something completely different.
Speaker 2:So you got to backup. Well, we have additional things going on. It wasn't one item.
Speaker 1:We've had five leaks at one time during some of these, so you've got to prioritize, then and watch that. What's that next thing you're going to do, which includes now agencies are showing up, agencies are showing up.
Speaker 2:So this is the point in time where you're validating your training. Do I have enough people trained? Can I send them in? Are they medically cleared? Are there physicals and fit tests current or did they expire? Do I have enough incident commanders to start? Because now I may be into the mode of I've got around the clock incident command, where I'm transferring command after each shift because we may be camped out here for a while.
Speaker 1:Maybe the weather's coming in and now I got to start doing different shows. But when you're doing vitals it's third shift.
Speaker 2:There's no nurse here. Who's doing my vitals? Do I have someone trained? Do I have to rely on the fire department? Who know when the fire?
Speaker 1:department show up and or Amos whatever. They don't always get there in three and four minutes. Some of my areas are rule.
Speaker 2:It depends. I'm going to take a few minutes.
Speaker 1:Some of them are volunteer fire, so you so when they show up, they can show up 12 minutes into this and you'll almost have to do like almost a stop and re-brief or 30 stop and re-. So you're signing. Now who's going to do that? You go talk to them, explain what we're doing, because we're getting ready to go turn off these valves.
Speaker 2:Now, the next point that I want to reiterate too is that, depending on, like Joe mentioned, what the timeline for responses, you may have regional fire close, but what is close? So those are things that you want to talk about on the preplanning side, to figure out how long is that response going to take, because, like based on traffic you may be doing everything we just talked about on your own, completely solo. They may not be showing up for 30 more minutes if it's regional has that and when they show up.
Speaker 2:It depends what your relationship is with them, between whatever police agency shows up, whether it's troopers or sheriff's office, or whoever, but you could have conflicts. I want you to know you could possibly have conflict, because a lot of that comes out of their fearful potentially. If you don't have that relationship, that's a good backup relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, they don't even know what you're doing is right. They're trying to evaluate that when they show up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're concerned. You're incompetent. They're concerned because this is maybe scary, maybe they've never had one before, and there's also something to keep in mind is that if you haven't had anybody that's you know, on your hazmat team that's experienced this before, there's going to be a lot of really excited people, and so you're going to potentially have some conflict. You're going to have some hollering.
Speaker 1:There's going to be You're going to have managers start. This is that 13, 15 minute window is when the managers start getting nervous Like, well, how crazy is this? How long are we going to be down? You start getting those questions. Well, how bad is it?
Speaker 2:Well, do we need to cancel the shifts? And you're, you're, you're still kind of almost in that investigation mode until you send that first team and then really figure out what's going on. So you know, this is, this is where all the conflict comes up of. Well, are you really doing it right? Well, is that really correct? Well, I don't really know, and you're having to defend everything you just did.
Speaker 1:And then you get some of the great plan. Then you get like your meter fails, yeah, great. Now I'm starting, as all of this goes on, that first 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:So all of that to say we don't have sponsors, but we have our company.
Speaker 2:So, you want to have some more in-depth training on some of this stuff. We do have an online version where you can get some of the data on how to structure all of this out ahead of time so that you have some of the training you need. You have some of the background. That's AlanSafetyCoachingcom or, if you're like you know what you play, like you practice, alansafetycom or Alan-Safetycom. You can, you can have a swing by and we can do some training.
Speaker 1:And in the old episodes old number eight, number nine there are a lot of details how to do this. They're not visual because we started doing the YouTube, but you can listen to them and there are a lot more details.
Speaker 2:Yep, so just a reminder, we're on Apple Podcasts, spotify, anywhere you get your podcast. So yeah, you can listen via YouTube and not see our faces. But it's on there or on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Jen's going to be speaking about some of this IAR here in a few weeks, so go see her.
Speaker 2:March, march in Orlando, iar. If you want to come ask questions, come hang out, come listen to me talk about some PSM and refrigeration stuff. Iar in March. Early bird registration is going on right now, so make sure you get registered. We will have a chat.
Speaker 1:All right, that's our top four. 15 minutes Just crazy almost.
Speaker 2:That's it All right, everybody Take care. Have a good week.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a Worker Safety Podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallonsafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallondashsafetycom to book our team for on-site services, training sessions, to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services we provide in the field, or just simply to request a topic for us to cover on our next podcast. If you found today's podcast helpful and would like to support our podcast further, please help us by subscribing, liking and sharing this podcast with anyone that could benefit from the information we cover here, as that helps us to continue to put out this free content. Thank you so much for your support.
