That's what my doctor friend calls ice fishermen, figuring that they serve the same purpose as canaries used to in coal mines.  

We often refer to Police as "blue canaries",  we can evaluate a HazMat incident from a distance by watching the police—they always drive right up to the scene,  if their cars don't stall, it's not an oxygen deprived atmosphere.
When they jump out of their vehicle, and if they don't die, it's not a poisonous atmosphere.
When they start lighting flares, and if there isn't an explosion, it's not an explosive atmosphere,
if the car doesn't melt into a puddle, the atmosphere isn't corrosive, and the firefighters can move in.

Quoted: We often refer to Police as "blue canaries",  we can evaluate a HazMat incident from a distance by watching the police—they always drive right up to the scene,  if their cars don't stall, it's not an oxygen deprived atmosphere. When they jump out of their vehicle, and if they don't die, it's not a poisonous atmosphere. When they start lighting flares, and if there isn't an explosion, it's not an explosive atmosphere, if the car doesn't melt into a puddle, the atmosphere isn't corrosive, and the firefighters can move in.

That's almost funny.  Wouldn't it be better to maybe help educate the police so they don't run into a potentially toxic situation like that?  MJD

Relax, it's a long standing joke between the Fire Sevice and the Police Service. They have their "hosepuller" jokes and we have our "blue canary" jokes.

Quoted: Quoted: We often refer to Police as "blue canaries",  we can evaluate a HazMat incident from a distance by watching the police—they always drive right up to the scene,  if their cars don't stall, it's not an oxygen deprived atmosphere. When they jump out of their vehicle, and if they don't die, it's not a poisonous atmosphere. When they start lighting flares, and if there isn't an explosion, it's not an explosive atmosphere, if the car doesn't melt into a puddle, the atmosphere isn't corrosive, and the firefighters can move in. That's almost funny.  Wouldn't it be better to maybe help educate the police so they don't run into a potentially toxic situation like that?  MJD

don't come down on him too hard.  sure you can TRY!  but it won't do much good.  it's best to keep them and the city firemen out of areas that can harm them.  that's why petrochem plants have their own fire departments and won't allow city firemen in the front gate.  

Alright, alright.  I just hate the thought of folks blindly running into a hostile environment when other people can stop it.  It reminds me of a story from a few weeks ago.  Two companies of fire fighters responded to a housefire in DC and got in a fight amongst themselves instead of putting out the fire.  True story, wish I had a link to the article.  MJD

Quoted: that's why petrochem plants have their own fire departments and won't allow city firemen in the front gate.

I have absolutely no prob with this. I'll let the "mop & glow" guys handle it.

In the last city I worked for, we had an alarm to a large chemical plant.
Cops were smart enough not to be in a hurry to this place.

We pull up in the Engine and see the plant workers running past us away from the plant. We weren't too worried til we saw  the guys with white lab coats running away as well. Now we were worried! This factory produced some nasty stuff.

Long story short-
After some sphincter tightening it turned out some pressure valve blew and the white cloud enveloping the plant was not   toxic.
HazMat sucks

Quoted: Long story short- After some sphincter tightening it turned out some pressure valve blew and the this time the white cloud enveloping the plant was not toxic. HazMat sucks

fixed it for ya...

plants are composed of units and each unit makes or does something to a product.  when you fail to "keep it in the pipe" sometimes you get a steam cloud, sometimes a Phosgene or hydrogen cyanide cloud.  depends on the unit and the pipe.

i worked in one plant where the product liked to be at -32 below zero.  at freezing it would vaporize and burn/explode.  we had a ton of chillers and backup systems to keep it cool.  it's one of those things you run from.  


story...  it's mid summer.  104 deg.f i an on a revamp on a unit and a seal breaks and one of our guys is soaked with this brown oil and starts screaming so we drag him to the safety shower and begin stripping clothes and he's hit with the scalding hot water from the shower.  so he looks like he has chemical burns and the plant fire alarm goes off because we are using the water.  has mat rushes to the scene and operations gets there.  The CRASH guys want to strip us all down and scald us because we must also be contaminated.  “we touched him”.  


the operator is rolling on the ground laughing his ass off.  One of the crash guys shakes some sense into him and he’s got tears streaming down his face as he says.  “this unit makes baby oil.”