Hazardous materials and snowballs

...As Penn Township Fire Chief Jan Cromer said recently, "Half the town could burn down before we get help." Typical scare tactic to get what you want. If CSX is increasing the amount of travel thru this area, have Hanover/Penn Twp go to THEM (CSX) and get them to provide the truck! Why should tax payers get slammed everytime someone gets "a bright idea"? Oh that's right, the tax payers are going to pay anyway! Oh, just go buy the dang thing! We need to contract out some of these services, maybe the tax payers could FINALLY get a break!

Do you realize how old Hanover really is? IT dates back to the Civil War and earlier than that. There are buildings that could just go up on no time.

Come on you need to read a little closer and stop bitching about your taxes, check what you get for local taxes and I mean local taxes not the combination price you pay for local and county together. I bet you don't live close to the railroad like I do and many others. I didn't see anywhere it was mentioned for the taxpayer to pay for this so pull your pants so they aren't so tight. I think it was mentioned in previous articles to get Homeland Security Grants and also go to CSX so what scare tactic is that. Isn't the concern again for the public?

First thing that strikes me as funy is that they want a foam truck. Shouldn't the main focus on a haz mat spill for local level responders be containment. Not all materials provide a flammable or explosive hazard. Second as for as foam I believe York airport has a foam unit and I am sure that Westminster area has some sort of medium level foam unit as well. I believe adams county has a foam/hazmat response team, if not wrong based out of bonneville. The last thing that is really amazing is less than 10 years ago Penn Twp had a hazmat team that it was determined to be not worth the trouble or money to keep open. Funny how now it is needed. One more thing how much equipment can 6-8 staff handle.

Everyone has good facts here but lets look at it like this if you have a flammable liquid fire Class B foam at 3% for hydrocarbon and thats Universal Gold other need applied at 6% that would mean it would take approximately 42 gallons of Class B foam applied for 15 minutes to suppress a flammable liquid fire that covers approximately 960 square feet. Think about that a little over 30 x 30 square foot area, thats not much. How many square feet would 5,000 gallon of flammabale liquid cover? Lets not think in the past but the future. By the way as a haz mat tech and know just a little, you don't have to be a haz mat team to suppress a fire containing hazardous materials. All fire services should be trained for haz mat oeprations and suppression.