Operation Respond and ESINC traveled through the Southeastern United States in October with the TRANScaer Whistle Stop Tour. This five-day tour provides hazardous materials training and outreach to emergency responders located near major railroad lines.
This year the Whistle Stop Tour began in Jacksonville, Florida, stopped in Forsyth, Savannah and Augusta, Georgia and finished in Charleston, South Carolina. The tour features hazmat training, education and outreach to local emergency responders. Firefighters, police officers, hazmat teams and EMS workers are invited to participate in the events free-of-charge and receive credit for training. Hundreds of emergency responders at each stop were provided hazardous materials training.
The tour is sponsored by the Norfolk Southern and TransCAER (Transportation Community Awareness Emergency Response). TRANScaer is a national outreach program that helps communities prepare for the possibility of a hazardous materials transportation incident. Norfolk Southern is a supporter of Operation Respond and participates in the OREIS™ software. ORI has participated in previous Whistle Stop Tours and has found the events to be quite worthwhile.
This year Operation Respond and ESINC presented an informational booth and performed training at each session. At the booth, ORI and ESINC representatives gave OREIS™ software demonstrations to attending responders and provided them with information about the software and the future direction of Operation Respond. Responders were also given a glimpse of new ORI technologies, like wireless OREIS applications and the GPS-driven OREIS ACCESS application.
Operation Respond also performed a training session at each of the stops of the tour. This one-hour training session included hands-on software demonstrations of various Operation Respond technologies for first responders, including the OREIS™ software, ACCESS mapping software, and PocketPC-driven wireless applications for emergency responders.
Attending response agencies were also given the opportunity to sign-up for OREIS at the booth and receive a copy of the CD-ROM software on the spot. Responders that enlisted for the software were required to provide contact and agency information and were issued a unique OREIS™ serial number.
The 2003 Whistle Stop Tour was an excellent outreach opportunity for Operation Respond. As a result of the tour, ORI distributed 140 sets of OREIS to emergency response agencies in the southern United States and trained a total of 104 responders.