The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) will host six free Ethanol Safety Seminars during July across Oklahoma and Missouri. To register for these seminars, go to www.rfa.traincaster.com.
Oklahoma will be home to four of the seminars. The first seminar will be on July 21 at the Western Technology Center in Weatherford; it is co-hosted by Oklahoma Emergency Management/LEPC. The second seminar will be held on July 22 at the Oklahoma City Fire Training Academy; it is co-hosted by Stillwater Central Railroad. The third seminar will be July 24 at the Case Community Center in Tulsa; it is co-hosted by South Kansas & Ohio Railroad. The final seminar will be July 25 at the Mid America Industrial Park Expo Center in Port of Catoosa. It is also co-hosted by Oklahoma Emergency Management/LEPC.
The seminars in Weatherford and Port of Catoosa are funded by an Oklahoma Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness grant while the Oklahoma City and Tulsa seminars are funded by a Federal Railroad Administration grant through TRANSCAER. RFA has been a TRANSCAER member since 2007.
The other two seminars will occur in Missouri, with the first to be held July 22 at the Public Safety Training Center in Joplin; it is co-hosted by Missouri & Northern Arkansas Railroad. The second will take place July 24 at the St Louis Fire Academy; it is co-hosted by Alton Southern Railroad. Both seminars are funded by a Federal Railroad Administration grant through TRANSCAER.
All seminars will have morning sessions from 9 am to 2 pm and evening sessions from 5:30 pm to 10 pm. Please note that registration is limited. Lunch and dinner will be provided. Certificates will be awarded to attendees at the completion of the course. While primarily targeting first responders, hazmat teams, safety managers, and local emergency planning committees, it is also open to the general public.
The goal of these seminars is for attendees to gain full ethanol emergency response training experience that they can put to use immediately in the field and pass along to other first response teams. A majority of this training is based on the “Training Guide to Ethanol Emergency Response,” a training package created by the Ethanol Emergency Response Coalition (EERC) that has been distributed throughout the United States and to several countries worldwide.
The Ethanol Safety Seminar focuses on numerous important areas of ethanol safety including an introduction to ethanol and ethanol-blended fuels, chemical and physical characteristics of ethanol and hydrocarbon fuels, transportation and transfer of ethanol-blended fuels, storage and dispensing locations, firefighting foam principles and ethanol-blended fuel, health and safety considerations for ethanol-blended fuel emergencies and tank farm and bulk storage fire incidents.
The RFA will be co-hosting Ethanol Safety Seminars throughout the summer in partnership with several railroads across the country. Scheduled Ethanol Safety Seminars include: August 7–8 in Alabama; August 11–12 in Missouri; and August 13–14 in Kansas.