As summer is around the corner, I want to wish all our Plan members and responders a very safe holiday season.

ERAC is pleased to welcome Ambipar Response - Prince Rupert to our network of response teams. Ambipar successfully completed their combined liquefied petroleum gas and flammable liquids regional training and assessment this May in Terrace, British Columbia. Congratulations and welcome aboard!

I would like to offer a special note of thanks to our team of ERAC Regional Managers/Technical Advisors for all their good work in completing numerous regional training and assessments along with firefighting training events. Their commitment to our members and ERAC makes a difference in dealing with dangerous goods incidents.

To ensure public and first responder safety, and our plan members’ compliance with Transport Canada, ERAC holds several firefighting training sessions across the country for Canadian-based emergency response teams and first responders. This training includes classroom studies and demonstrations and concludes with full-scale, live-burn, hands-on training exercises.

This May, ERAC was in Brandon, Manitoba to hold a two-day flammable liquids firefighting training session with six of our highly trained, Canadian-based emergency response teams. These training sessions ensure that ERAC response teams who attend to a flammable liquid incident are well-trained and competent to provide a safe and effective response, protecting people, property and the environment.

ERAC thanks CN, CPKC, Superior Propane and the Brandon Manitoba Emergency Services College for supporting our two-day firefighting training session.

ERAC is proud to support Transport Canada’s objective to promote public safety and security during the transportation of dangerous goods and is prepared to respond effectively on those rare occasions when an incident occurs.

Spencer Buckland
President

ERAC recently held its third, biennial Dangerous Goods Emergency Management (DGEM) Conference in Calgary, June 4-6.

This year’s conference kicked off with four-time Olympic gold medalist hockey great, Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser, and featured some of North America’s leading emergency management professionals and responders from oil and gas, transportation, hydrogen, government and industry.

This year, for the second time, the National Responder Awards reception and dinner was held in conjunction with the DGEM conference. At the dinner, the efforts of outstanding ERAC responders and response teams were recognized in the areas of Leadership, Safety, Training and Learning, and long-term service.  ERAC congratulates this year’s excellence award winners:

• Clint Hillman – Excellence in Leadership Award,
• Normand Desvergnes – Excellence in Safety Award, and
• Propane MM – Excellence in Training and Learning Award.  

ERAC thanks AltaGas, CN, Ambipar Response, Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Gibson Energy, Moore Propane Limited, Caltrax Inc. and Superior Propane for generously supporting this year’s conference. This conference would not have been a success without your support!

ERAC has developed its own versions of the Incident Command System (ICS) 100 and 200 courses to support our responders in meeting the basics of ICS. These two internal adaptations are intended to meet the requirement for ERAC responders who respond to transportation (rail & road) incidents involving liquefied petroleum gases and flammable liquids.

ERAC’s ICS 100 and 200 courses are available for free to Canadian-based first responders (firefighters, police, EMS) and our Plan members and their employees.

Learn more about our ICS courses.

Each year, ERAC holds several Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Level 1 Operations Firefighting training courses for first responders across Canada. Course participants review commonly encountered LPG emergencies, work through strategies and tactics to safely manage the situation and complete their training with hands on “live burn” exercises. Instructors are ERAC full-time technical advisors with NFPA 1041 instructor credentials. Many of our participants are on-call firefighters in their community.  

You can learn more about our LPG training courses here.