The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced a final rule to protect firefighters and improve public safety. The final rule requires railroads to proactively provide first responders with real-time, electronic information about rail hazmat shipments to the primary Public Safety Answering Point (for example, a 9-1-1 call center or emergency responder phone app such as the AskRail Mobile App as soon as the railroad is aware of an accident or incident involving hazardous materials.

The final rule requires all railroads to generate, in hard copy and electronic versions, real-time train consist information for shipments containing hazardous materials. Required information includes the quantity and position of the hazardous materials on the train, the train’s origin and destination, emergency response information, and a designated emergency point of contact at the railroad.

The new rule will ensure firefighters can fully utilize PHMSA’s 2024 Emergency Response Guidebook (as well as the mobile phone ERG app), which PHMSA recently distributed to nearly 2 million first responders across the nation as part of a quadrennial effort to equip first responders with information on how to respond to each type of hazmat incident.

In addition to the new rule, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken key steps to improve the safety of America’s railways by deploying funding from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, holding railroads accountable, raising rail safety standards, and supporting first responders and rail workers.

To date, DOT has announced over $2 billion in rail safety infrastructure investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and recently issued final rules to enhance rail safety including:

• A final rule that establishes minimum safety requirements for the size of train crews and generally requires a second crewmember on trains.
• A final rule that requires railroads to provide emergency escape breathing apparatuses to train crews and other employees when transporting certain hazardous materials.
• A final rule that requires the installation of locomotive video recording devices on passenger trains.
• A final rule that requires that large freight and passenger railroads systematically identify and evaluate fatigue-related hazards on their system, measures those risks, and then mitigate them.

-via Press Release