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On July 6, Jeff Fleming, Regional Sales Manager for
Draeger Safety Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, finishes
a week-long training class for the Baltimore, Maryland,
City Fire Department. The fire officers have just taken
delivery of new Dräger BG4 rebreathers, and now
know exactly what the equipment is capable of in an
emergency, though hopefully this will never arise. The
sophisticated closed-circuit technology built into the
apparatus allows rescue operations of up to four hours
to be carried out, unlike Dräger self-contained breathing
apparatus (SCBA) which, depending on the size of
the oxygen cylinders, are suitable for shorter operations
lasting between 20 and 30 minutes. Fleming’s
objective was to give the firefighters full training in
use of their new rebreathers. “We spend so much
time on training our personnel, yet most of this BG4
equipment will most likely go unused,” explains
Doug Campbell, Baltimore City Fire Department’s
senior rebreathers technician, when chatting to
Fleming shortly before his departure. He is soon to
find out just how mistaken he was.
Twelve days later, a sixty-car CSX Corporation
freight train carrying eight hazardous material tankers
derails in the Howard Street Tunnel that runs underneath
the city of Baltimore with its population of
roughly 300,000. The train catches fire, and a seam
on one of the tankers bursts, leaking hydrochloric acid
at a rate of 50 liters per minute. Baltimore City Fire
Department is called out, and Doug Campbell immediately
contacts Jeff Fleming, who activates the Dräger
Emergency Response Program without delay.
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Covering the NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) area, the Emergency Response Program
has been in place at Dräger Safety’s American subsidiary
ever since the 1990s. The program sets out precisely
what assistance Dräger, as a leading supplier
of safety products and services, can provide to local
emergency and rescue crews in the event of a disaster.
An integral element of the program is the emergency
manual that Fleming grabbed just as soon as he received
the call from Baltimore. The program expresses
Dräger Safety’s total responsibility toward its customers,
for whom the slogan “We care for your Safety”
means that they can expect not only innovative products
and total service solutions, but that Dräger will
also support them in carrying out their tasks within
the framework of an integrated risk management
system.
To ensure quick and efficient reactions in an
emergency and to save human lives and property, the
emergency manual defines responsibilities and the
action to be taken by Dräger staff as soon as the
emergency is reported. Over the years, the program
has proven its worth a number of times when Dräger
gas detection equipment and breathing apparatus
and, in some cases, highly qualified personnel, were
required quickly at the scene of an accident.
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Rob McCall, Draeger Safety’s operations manager,
is put in charge of the emergency program for the
tunnel fire. That same day, Jeff Fleming and Draeger
Service technician Harry Eberz make the six-hour
journey, under police escort, to Baltimore.
Once at the tunnel, they find the emergency
services battling their way through the tunnel, the
firefighters wearing Dräger SCBAs. Martin O’Malley,
Mayor of Baltimore City, knows how dangerous their
job is: “We are lucky to have such brave firefighters
who grab a hose and walk into a tunnel with smoke
billowing out of it, not knowing how far they’ll get
before there’ll be an explosion or the tunnel collapses
over their heads.” At one end of the tunnel, the fire
department is using Dräger Airboss Evolution SCBAs.
A 100-meter air hose and a portable air cart provides
the fire officers with fresh air, giving them the mobility
to advance through the tunnel, extinguishing the
fire as they move forward. At the other end, the fire
crews are entering the two-mile-long tunnel on fire
trains. “This is the perfect scenario for a BG4 operation,"
explains Jeff Fleming, ordering more BG4 units
from Dulles Airport in nearby Washington, DC.
Fleming and Eberz set up a BG4 command and control
center in a nearby art school building and work
around the clock, testing, cleaning and disinfecting
equipment and assembling them ready for use. They
do over a month’s work in just 16 hours, while at the
same time training about 120 people, including the
CXS Corporation train personnel.
The tunnel fire continues for two weeks in all,
the teams working in shifts around the clock. Besides
breathing apparatus, the fire fighters also use Dräger
thermal imaging cameras to locate the train and fire
seats in conditions of thick fog and smoke. Dräger
MiniWarn four-gas monitors are used to detect combustible
gases, oxygen and carbon monoxide in the
tunnel, while outside hazmat teams take constant gas
measurements with Dräger Tubes and the Dräger
CMS chip measurement system to detect levels of
carbon monoxide and hydrochloric acid fumes.
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The Dräger program is invoked once again in response
to the nine-eleven terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center in New York. Inventory levels of all available
products are immediately checked, Dräger staff called
together to create a task force and the special transportation
of equipment and personnel organized.
Once again, Rob McCall heads up the Dräger action
team.
“We realized we had to somehow prepare a
large specialized shipment for dispatch later that day,”
remembers McCall. Fortunately, Dräger Safety had the
foresight to set up a dedicated warehouse as part of
its emergency program, with a constant stock of the
most important and urgently needed products, like
respiratory protective devices, breathing protection
filters, masks, gas detectors and thermal imaging
cameras, together with the respective consumables
and spare parts. The scale of the nine-eleven events,
however, means that much more equipment than
that is required, and within just half a day everything
needed is prepared for special shipment. At first, only
a quarter of the equipment thought to be urgently
needed in New York is to be sent, the rest being kept
ready for shipment to wherever it should be required,
either at the Pentagon or any other, as yet unknown,
targets of terrorist attacks. Because there is a total
ban on airborne traffic, four trucks are hired and a
motor home made available to transport the products
and provide accommodation for the five members of
the Dräger Task Force in New York. At 4 p.m., the
convoy sets off from Pittsburgh, with police escort,
arriving at Long Island in New York at 1:30 a.m. the
next morning. “It was truly inspiring for me to see the
teamwork from our Dräger staff, especially from nonproduction
employees who helped load the equipment
onto the trucks,” explains McCall. In the end, all
the equipment originally kept in Pittsburgh is shipped
off to New York over the next few days.
Looking back at the nine-eleven disaster, Wes Kenneweg,
Draeger Safety Inc. CEO, is quite sure of one
thing: “Without our Emergency Response Program
and policies manual already in place, our ability to
react in such an orderly, expedited fashion would have
been compromised. Our well-equipped emergency
warehouse played an essential part in providing this
capability, as we keep stocks not only of Dräger devices
but also items like blankets, chairs, water, floodlights
and first-aid material.” Over a century ago, the
term “Draegerman” was coined—Dräger rebreathers
supplied mine rescue workers with oxygen on their
dangerous journey through the mines to rescue their
colleagues buried under the rubble. Whenever the
“Draegermen” turned up, a successful outcome
became a real possibility. Today, the name Dräger
and the concept of the Draegermen are synonymous
with total hazard management, not just in America
but worldwide. Customers all over the world rely on
Dräger Safety equipment, systems and services. In
2001, there were two more challenging tests for the
Emergency Response Program after September 11.
September 23, 2001, Tuscalusa, Alabama, USA
Following a methane gas explosion at Jim Walters
Resources Mine #5 in Tuscalusa, Alabama, the emergency
services urgently need soda lime for their BG4
and BG174 long-term breathing apparatus. Dräger
delivers the alkali cartridges to Alabama and provides
technical support with fire containment and rescue
work.
November 16, 2001, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
At the International Monetary Conference, the G20
Summit, in Ottawa, Draeger Canada makes 250 masks
and 500 filters available at short notice to equip the
security forces. A service vehicle with two Draeger
Canada employees remains on site, ready for action,
throughout the three-day conference, though fortunately
neither their services nor the equipment is
needed.
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