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36 A Guide for Assessing Community Emergency Response Needs and Capabilities for Hazardous Materials Releases
Table 19. Response time factors.
Response Time Factor
Description
[RTF]
1 Meets or exceeds desired response time
2 Response time is within 125 percent of desired response time
3 Response time is within 150 percent of desired response time
4 Response time is within 200 percent of the desired response time
5 Response time is more than double the desired response time
You may also want to consider response mode in your determination of the appropriate response
time factor. The team or elements of the team have the option, given jurisdictional policies, to
travel with lights and sirens (commonly known as Code 1), with lights only and more limited
exemptions to traffic laws (often known as Code 2), and following normal traffic laws without
warning lights or sirens (known as Code 3). Generally, you would want to assume a response mode
of Code 1 for the best possible speed to respond to a hazmat incident.
In addition, you may also want to consider the impacts that multiple large concurrent inci-
dents may have on your ability to respond. Mutual-aid agreements might also be considered
in your approach for reducing emergency response time or in meeting emergency response
time objectives.
You can use a number of tools to estimate response time for response capability (teams) to arrive
at the location of potential incidents. These include online mapping tools or geographic infor-
mation system (GIS) analysis. Appendix E contains a more detailed explanation of response time
assessment, including how to use GIS to determine response coverage areas.
Step 18
Calculate the RTF by outcome for each scenario in your hazardous materials portfolio using
the values in Table 19, based in turn on your Jurisdictional Class. Record the highest RTF.
If the assessment tool is used, this step is calculated automatically from the response time
entries in Step 17.
An example of the calculation sequence associated with Step 18 is shown in Appendix E.
Quantifying the Mitigating Effects
To understand how the ERC and RTF terms affect the overall consequence term in the risk
equation, first consider that appropriate emergency response will have the maximum impact if
it arrives within the desired time frame. If the response capability is below what is needed, then it
will be less effective, and consequences will not be reduced as much. The same is true for response
time; if the response arrives too late, it will be less effective and will not reduce consequences as
much as if it arrived sooner.
The combination of ERC and RTF (by multiplying them together) tells you relatively how much
your emergency response capability may impact the potential consequences of an incident.
Reducing response time and/or increasing response capability are the two key elements that you
can control at the jurisdictional level. Given that both of these improvements would incur costs,
the methodology in this Guide helps you determine where it makes sense to allocate additional
resources.
