Responding to Environmental Emergencies

In a perfect world, your company’s EHS program would prevent environmental emergencies. But emergencies can happen anyway despite your best efforts. Chemical spills, explosions,train derailments that release hazardous substances and other types of environmental emergencies can happen even at companies that work hard to prevent them. How a company responds to such an emergency can greatly impact the effect of the release on the environment, as well as on the health and welfare of the people in neighbouring communities. A botched response can result in serious injuries and deaths, extensive property damage, catastrophic destruction of ecosystems and other harm from which the environment may take years—if not decades—to recover.