Rural Transportation Emergency Preparedness Plans

"TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 160: Paratransit Emergency Preparedness and Operations Handbook includes guidance, strategies, tools, and resources to help paratransit service providers plan and prepare for, respond to, and recover from a range of emergencies. The guidance has applicability to urban, suburban, rural, and tribal paratransit operating environments. The project that developed TCRP Report 160 also a PowerPoint presentation describing the entire project. A link to the HTML version of TCRP Report 160 will be available on this site by the second week of March 2013."--Pub. info.

Meant to aid State & local emergency managers in their efforts to develop & maintain a viable all-hazard emergency operations plan. This guide clarifies the preparedness, response, & short-term recovery planning elements that warrant inclusion in emergency operations plans. It offers the best judgment & recommendations on how to deal with the entire planning process -- from forming a planning team to writing the plan. Specific topics of discussion include: preliminary considerations, the planning process, emergency operations plan format, basic plan content, functional annex content, hazard-unique planning, & linking Federal & State operations.

"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 753: A Pre-Event Recovery Planning Guide for Transportation is designed to help transportation owners and operators in their efforts to plan for recovery prior to the occurrence of an event that impacts transportation systems. The guide includes tools and resources to assist in both pre-planning for recovery and implementing recovery after an event. NCHRP Report 753 is intended to provide a single resource for understanding the principles and processes to be used for pre-event recovery planning for transportation infrastructure. In addition to the principles and processes, the guide contains checklists, decision support tools, and resources to help support pre-event recovery planning."--Publisher description.

Does the identification number 60 indicate a toxic substance or a flammable solid, in the molten state at an elevated temperature? Does the identification number 1035 indicate ethane or butane? What is the difference between natural gas transmission pipelines and natural gas distribution pipelines? If you came upon an overturned truck on the highway that was leaking, would you be able to identify if it was hazardous and know what steps to take? Questions like these and more are answered in the Emergency Response Guidebook. Learn how to identify symbols for and vehicles carrying toxic, flammable, explosive, radioactive, or otherwise harmful substances and how to respond once an incident involving those substances has been identified. Always be prepared in situations that are unfamiliar and dangerous and know how to rectify them. Keeping this guide around at all times will ensure that, if you were to come upon a transportation situation involving hazardous substances or dangerous goods, you will be able to help keep others and yourself out of danger. With color-coded pages for quick and easy reference, this is the official manual used by first responders in the United States and Canada for transportation incidents involving dangerous goods or hazardous materials.

"NCHRP Report 777: A Guide to Regional Transportation Planning for Disasters, Emergencies, and Significant Events helps transportation stakeholders in the public and private sectors, as well as non-transportation stakeholders, such as emergency managers and first responders, better understand transportation's important role in planning for multijurisdictional disasters, emergencies, and major events. The guide sets out foundational planning principles and uses examples, case studies, tips, tools, and suggested strategies to illustrate their implementation."--Foreword.

TRB Special Report 294: The Role of Transit in Emergency Evacuation explores the roles that transit systems can play in accommodating the evacuation, egress, and ingress of people from and to critical locations in times of emergency. The report focuses on major incidents that could necessitate a partial to full evacuation of the central business district or other large portion of an urban area. According to the committee that produced the report, transit agencies could play a significant role in an emergency evacuation, particularly in transporting carless and special needs populations, but few urban areas have planned for a major disaster and evacuation that could involve multiple jurisdictions or multiple states in a region, or have focused on the role of transit and other public transportation providers in such an incident. The report offers recommendations for making transit a full partner in emergency evacuation plans and operations, while cautioning emergency managers, elected officials, and the general public to be realistic in their expectations, particularly in a no-notice incident that occurs during a peak service period.