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Press hard... Four copies or... How to not get nailed by OSHA...
You can easily go to the OSHA website to check for violations against fire and police agencies to see if there is anything amiss with our training programs and emergency responses.
A friend of mine thought it would be interesting to get information that was a little more specific to hazmat response, so I searched for Hazwoper emergency response violations against fire departments nationwide. This is not a straight forward process but his research found the following.
Results are:
Number of agencies cited: 24
Number of violations: 42
Most common violations:
~ Lack of an emergency response plan or insufficient plan: 20
~ No refresher training: 6
~ No safety officer appointed during an emergency response: 3
Miscellaneous cites: 13 (about half were response-related)
Most of these violations were in New York and New Jersey. For some reason there are way more OSHA violations against fire departments in those two states than any other states. He had no idea why...
What is a given is that you can look out for your departments best interest by ensuring your department is not deficient inane of the categories list above.
Remember, it's all about making your supervisor look good. Now that you know what to look for, be an asset and make sure appropriate safeguards are in place for your agency. This would be the time to be organized and prepared verse being the guy that believes organized people are just too lazy to look for things.
Summary:
~ Have an emergency response plan
~ Provide refresher training
~ Appoint a safety officer during an emergency response
Failure to prepare is preparing for failure... Be prepared!
CBz
Note: CalOSHA rarely cites fire departments unless there is a complaint or an injury.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Generally not. The OSHA investigators who check out machinery accidents at chicken processing plants are not generally former chicken processing machine operators, either.
OSHA investigators have to investigate accidents in a wide variety of industries. It is unrealistic to expect them to have a background in every industry they regulate - or even one specific industry background.
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Permalink Reply by Charles Dusha on
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Capitol city (or should I say JC) (yes, I know where you work, and who you work for), if you think OSHA does not apply to you, think again. AT least as far as Hazmat is concerned, the OSHA and EPA standards are the same, the EPA standard does apply to you (no exemption there), and OSHA and EPA work together, so you can be cited by EPA for a violation (having done both training and investigative work for EPA, the easiest one to nail you on is probably failure to document training or your annual demonstration of competency), even if it is OSHA investigator that finds it. The other place to worry is in civil court. Lack of violation will not prevent you from being sued, and will not protect you if you are (Try telling a lawyer that even though you did something stupid you didn't break the law, and see how far that gets you in front of the judge and jury).
OSHA was create to protect the worker from the unscrupulous employer. Just because OSHA has been around for 30+ years, that hasn't gone away. Doing something that could get you killed is one thing, doing something that could get someone else killed or injured is another. The OSHA standards are no different than NFPA, or ANSI, or any of a dozen others, as a matter of fact, NFPA standards are more stringent, the big difference is that they are not law, unless thaey are adopted as such by the authority having jurisdiction.
I could go on and say a lot more, but most of it has already been said, probably better than I can by the previous posters. Stay safe.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Hansen on
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Believe it is the EPA that is required to adopt OSHA standards verbatim for non OSHA states. If it makes you feel better that the citations don't come from OSHA than great otherwise its the same rules
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Permalink Reply by Michael Paschal on
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Yes. Regarding non-OSHA states the enforcement defaults to the Department of Labor. DOL refers back to OSHA and EPA regs. EPA directly addresses vol. departments as subject to the requirements.
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