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AOT consolidates hazmat, safety and emergency management and tests new disaster assessment tool
Summary
Chris Herrick of the Agency of Transportation told the House Transportation committee the agency has merged hazardous materials into its safety and emergency management group, is working with FEMA on multiple open disaster declarations and is beta-testing an iPad-based preliminary damage assessment tool to speed recovery and reimbursement.
Chris Herrick, director of emergency management and safety at the Agency of Transportation, told the House Transportation Committee that the agency has consolidated hazardous materials, safety and emergency management into a single unit and is focusing on faster, more accurate disaster assessment and recovery.
Herrick said the combined unit has about 50 employees and that the safety program’s mission is “to make sure that all 1,273 employees of the Agency of Transportation do their work safely.” He told the committee the team handles a wide range of tasks from site inspections to OSHA compliance and training.
The agency is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on recovery from recent floods and other declared disasters. Herrick said there are seven currently open declared disasters and that AOT staff are streamlining the preliminary damage assessment process. He described a beta tool the agency is testing that lets staff photograph a washed-out culvert, enter dimensions (for example, 6 feet by 45 feet) and automatically generate a FEMA‑approved cost estimate that will feed into the agency’s incident command displays.
Herrick said the tool will help aggregate damage estimates that inform when thresholds for state or gubernatorial requests for federal declarations are reached. He described plans for a full-scale exercise in October to test the system and the transportation incident command center.
On hazardous materials, Herrick said the agency last year arranged disposal of approximately 195,000 (currency not specified) in hazardous waste from garage sites and responded to about 100 hazmat incidents. He said AOT personnel handle right‑of‑way spills that fall below state hazmat team response thresholds and that the agency coordinated the closure and removal of about 65 underground storage tanks.
Herrick also described training requirements inside AOT. He said all agency employees are required to complete at least the 100‑level Incident Command System training, and that the agency is evaluating higher‑level training for staff who work in the incident command center.
He noted the agency maintains procedures for homelessness encampments in the state right‑of‑way and that those procedures integrate with the Agency of Human Services and district staff.
Herrick closed by inviting questions from the committee and saying staff would provide follow‑up details as requested.
