Questions being raised in the wake of the train derailments in northern Ontario back in March over how prepared we are should a similar disaster strike here at home.
Saint John Chief Kevin Clifford delivering an update to Common Council on his department’s readiness to respond to a derailment. He says that while we are capable to respond to that type of incident there is a significant training gap for first responders when it comes to dealing with large scale flammable fuels.
Common Council officially backing Clifford’s efforts to bring about a national training standard for those type of incidents and the regional approach to training. He says firefighters in Saint John should possess the same skill sets with respect to flammable fuel fires as the firefighter in Vancouver because if there’s a right way to do things then we should all be trained in that right way.
Clifford says there is no standard of training firefighters for large scale flammable fuels at the moment.
The City Fire Chief is a member of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs Transportation of Dangerous Materials committee.
