This week Rep. Herrera (R,WA) introduced HR 4765, the Fire
Department Proper Response and Equipment Prioritization Act. The bill would
require FEMA to give high priority to grants for incident response training for
crude oil and ethanol train accidents.
Assistance to Fire Fighters Grants
The bill would amend 15
USC 2229(c), Assistance to firefighters grants, by adding a new paragraph
(4) that would require FEMA to “give high priority consideration to grants
providing for planning, training, and equipment to firefighters for crude
oil-by-rail and ethanol-by-rail derailment and incident response”.
No additional funding is provided.
Moving Forward
Herrera is not a member of the Science, Space and Technology
Committee to which this bill has been assigned. Thus it is unlikely that she
would be able to influence the Committee to take up this bill. The alternative
would be to use this language as a floor amendment to either a FEMA
authorization bill or the DHS spending bill. In either case it would be
unlikely that there would be any substantial opposition to the amendment.
Commentary
I can sympathize with any congressman that has oil or
ethanol trains transiting communities within their district. While there have
been a number of high-profile crude oil train accidents in the last couple of
years, the actual threat to any given community is quite remote. But if an
accident did occur the community would rely on their emergency response
personnel to be trained and equipped to handle such a situation.
Many (if not most) communities do not have the spare training
and equipment funds to finance operations of such low potential occurrence. This
is where local communities tend to turn to the deep (relatively) pockets of the
federal government for assistance. Those pockets are not deep enough, however,
to fund every community for every year for such training and equipment. And
training, if not repeated or practiced frequently, becomes stale and
ineffective.
For low frequency, high-impact events like these rail
catastrophes would probably be more effectively served by training and equipping
a fast acting state or regional response team. The equipment costs for each
team would be higher due to having to be able to respond quickly over longer
distances (probably require air transport), but it would be lower than training
and equipping each fire department along the train routes.
The other problem with this bill and others like it that
expand grant uses or influence the grant funding process without providing
additional funds it that they really only serve to dilute the limited money
available for these grants. Particularly for low frequency events like this,
grants to one community will mean that another community with a more likely occurrence
that needs grant money will not get it.
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