Skip to content

Hazmat · Emergencies

The Emergency Response Guidebook is a PHMSA publication rather than a regulation, so the federal requirement is about the information itself. At a minimum, what must the emergency response information for your load contain?

1.The basic description and technical name of the material, immediate hazards to health, risks of fire or explosion, immediate precautions to take in the event of an accident or incident, immediate methods for handling fires, initial methods for handling spills or leaks where there is no fire, and preliminary first aid measuresCorrect answer
2.The basic description and technical name of the material, the name and telephone number of the shipper, the carrier's federal operating authority number, and the address of the nearest hospital and fire station to each point along the route the vehicle will travel
3.The hazard class and the identification number alone, since responders carry their own guidebooks and the regulation asks the carrier for nothing more than enough to let them look the material up in the reference material they already carry with them on the apparatus
4.Whatever the carrier judges a responder would want to have on arrival, since the regulation sets out no minimum content of its own and leaves the whole question to the carrier's own emergency planning and to the training that it gives its hazmat employees each cycle

Explanation

Emergency response information must contain, as a minimum, the basic description and technical name of the hazardous material, immediate hazards to health, risks of fire or explosion, immediate precautions to be taken in the event of an accident or incident, immediate methods for handling fires, initial methods for handling spills or leaks in the absence of fire, and preliminary first aid measures. The list is a floor rather than a ceiling, which is why the regulation calls it a minimum and why more detailed information is never a violation. The Emergency Response Guidebook is a PHMSA publication and not a regulation, so what binds a carrier is this content requirement; the guidebook is one of the documents that can satisfy it, not the rule itself. The wrong options each replace the list with something else, a set of commercial and administrative details, a cut-down identification-only version that assumes responders will look the rest up, or the claim that no minimum exists at all.

Source: 49 CFR 172.602(a)

Drill Emergencies questions

Related Emergencies questions