The consequences of terrorist acts or natural or man-made disasters involving hazardous materials or WMD can be catastrophic. With more than 800,000 daily movements of chemicals and other hazardous materials on the nation’s transportation system, community safety remains a paramount concern to emergency responders. The early stages of an incident are not unlike the “Golden Hour” in medicine – knowing immediately what to do is often the primary difference between a well-organized emergency response and an out-of-control situation.
First responders to a transportation incident need to know immediately: What kind of hazardous materials are we dealing with? It's in those first few, critical minutes that first responders must take actions to accurately assess the situation, safeguard lives and property, and prepare the scene for arriving fire, medical or hazardous materials specialists. Information needed includes verification of the contents of a vehicle and the proper immediate response actions.
Accordingly, Operation Respond’s concept for emergency information access is straightforward: Provide the emergency responder secure, pre-established computer links with the railroad to remotely access rail car ID and manifest records, to enable a secure, direct hazmat cargo confirmation by the emergency responder. Then, link the cargo confirmation to the exact action guidance needed at the scene to begin a safe emergency response. This concept was first tested in Houston in the early 1990’s with the cooperation of the Port Terminal Railroad, under Federal Railroad Administration sponsorship.
The Operation Respond Institute is a not-for-profit corporation headquartered in Washington, D.C. ORI’s unique software program, the Operation Respond Emergency Information System (OREIS™), is made available only to emergency response organizations. The system offers quick, accurate response guidance for dealing with specific chemicals under varying conditions and contains many other resources allowing responders to save time and lives in an incident. Through OREIS™, emergency responders can directly access a carrier’s files to identify whether or not hazardous materials are being transported, and if such material is present, OREIS™ provides a verification of the contents and initial guidance as to the appropriate response. OREIS™ Mobile is the new, wireless version of the software.
The OREIS™ software also contains equipment schematics of tank cars, bulk containers, hazmat trucks and all Amtrak (and many commuter rail operators’) passenger cars and locomotives. These schematics are critically important when dealing with on-board bomb threats or hostage situations.
By virtue of Operation Respond’s Carrier Agreements with all major North American railroads, OREIS™ is the only software authorized to provide emergency response organizations and personnel with independent electronic access to the railroads’ hazmat shipping databases for participating emergency responders. With links to the members of the DOJ-supported Regional Information Sharing System national network and the state-supported National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, OREIS™ is currently functioning or accessible by over 56,200 organizations and units in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and is estimated to reach over 2,000,000 first responders throughout North America.