Review - PHMSA Transportation Incident Database Reporting - Week of 3-29-24

Since January 13^th, I have been trying to report on chemical transportation incident as reported to PHMSA on their Form 5800.1. Back in April I noted problems with the data sets I was using for my reporting, it did not seem that they were complete. In my reporting then, I noted that I was changing the elapsed time that I was using for selecting the week for which I would be reporting. But I still noted that I did not have solid data to support that selection. Since that time, I have been collecting the necessary data.

Background Information

My earlier post I provided detailed background information on the FORM 5800.1. The regulatory basis for the report is found at 49 CFR 171.16, Detailed hazardous materials incident reports. It requires anyone that is in the possession of a hazardous material at the time of a covered incident {see §171.16(a) for what constitutes a covered incident} is responsible for submitting the form within 30-days of the incident being discovered. This 30-day reporting period causes the majority of the problems that I ran across in my earlier reporting.

There is a more immediate incident reporting requirement at §171.15, Immediate notice of certain hazardous materials incidents. That section requires telephonic notification to the National Response Center (NRC) at 800–424–8802 within 12-hours of a covered incident. The definition of a covered incident {§171.15(b)} from this section is included as a subset of the §171.16(a) definition. As should be expected, the reporting data requirements are much less detailed for the telephonic reporting.

New Data Collection

Starting on April 5^th, I began to collect data from the PHMSA database for the week of March 29^th thru April 4^th. I accessed the database and downloaded that week’s data every Friday morning between 8:00 and 10:00 am EDT. The graph below shows the number of incidents per day of the week for each of the eight weeks that data was collected.

 

There is no change in any of the data between weeks 7 and 8. For the purposes of this analysis I am going to assume that no other incidents will be reported for this week. There is no real expectation that no other incidents will be reported, but the numbers should be minimal and inconsequential for my reporting on transportation hazmat incidents.

Potential Problem with 5-Week Reporting

Analyzing the changes in the various reporting elements of potential interest over the eight weeks seemed to confirm the reasonableness of my recent change to reporting on the PHMSA database data five weeks out from the week of incidents. There is, however, one exception: the data for the size of container involved in the incidents. The graph below shows the number of incidents reported for various size shipping containers for the week of March 29^th, 2024, for eight weeks.

For Week #5 only 66.67% of the bulk container incidents were reported. Since incidents involving bulk containers are potentially the most dangerous, it would seem that reporting on the PHMSA database five weeks out may be missing critical information. Of course, the data here is looking at just a single, random week. It looks like I am going to have to collect additional data…

 

For more information no the PHMSA database reporting, including additional data point analysis, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/phmsa-transportation-incident-database - subscription required.