Emergency response improves | Truckers, first responders and firefighters find training helpful
Much like Monday morning quarterbacking, it’s easy to criticize the response to livestock transport accidents after the fact, says an expert from Alberta.
In reality, it’s a thorny task to respond perfectly to the chaos of 200 hogs inside, outside or trapped under a truck on the side of a highway.
“People, the media included, do not understand the magnitude of what happens … and how difficult the situation is,” said Jennifer Woods, of J. Woods Livestock Services in Blackie, Alta., who teaches truck drivers, firefighters and other first responders how to react to livestock truck accidents.
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“Until you’ve been in the middle of it at two o’clock in the morning and it’s – 30… nobody truly appreciates how difficult these scenes are.”
Woods’ comments were in re-sponse to a hog trailer rollover in May on the Trans-Canada Highway west of Brandon. Based on eyewitness reports, dozens of hogs died when the truck rolled into the median ditch.
Several observers criticized the response to the accident, noting emergency personnel didn’t properly care for animals with broken bones and other injuries.
Without getting into the specifics of that incident, Woods said the handling of livestock transport accidents across North America has improved dramatically and continues to evolve.
“When I started this 14 years ago, I never would have dreamed that it evolved into what it has,” said Woods, who helped develop the first training program in Canada to assist first responders with livestock related accidents.
Since then, Woods has trained hundreds of North Americans on the complexities and subtleties of livestock accident response.
“People who take my training, a lot of times they’ll come to me and say, we didn’t have a clue…. We couldn’t figure out how you’re going to spend a whole day talking about this.”
In addition to the training, there are now dozens of livestock emergency response units across Canada and the United States, which are specially equipped with temporary fencing and tools appropriate for livestock wrecks.
Reacting properly to a crash is key, because rollovers and accidents are bound to happen, said Woods, who worked with Temple Grandin while studying animal science at Colorado State University.
“We’re never going to totally eliminate them…. That’s like (saying) we’re going to eliminate car wrecks.”
Completely curtailing accidents may be impossible, but the number of accidents can be reduced, she said.
Several years ago, Woods authored a study on the causes of livestock accidents. She concluded the majority of crashes are connected to driver fatigue. Her research prompted Murphy Brown, an American hog production company, to introduce a fatigue prevention program. Murphy Brown’s accident rate is now less than the frequency of crashes of an average trucking company, Woods said.
While there are success stories, livestock trucking companies are having a hard time retaining experienced drivers, Woods said.
“I know it’s one industry that struggles to keep people long term,” she said, as loading and unloading pigs and cattle, on top of driving, isn’t for everyone.
“It’s a hard job. Most of your guys, like your Wal-Mart freight guy, they drive the truck. (Other) people load and unload.”
Yet, Deanna Pagnan, director of the livestock transporters’ division with the Canadian Trucking Alliance, said driver retention isn’t an issue. All livestock drivers in Canada, whether they have driven a truck for two months or 20 years, are qualified, she said.
“No carrier is going to put an unqualified driver on the road,” she said. “They (drivers) go through rigorous in-class training and training with an experienced driver.”
There is no evidence proving that driver training has reduced the number of livestock rollovers or other accidents in North America, because crashes are not tracked based on sector.
No one separates the statistics into livestock accidents, propane truck crashes or lumber truck rollovers.
“There’s stats out there that report on truck accidents but they don’t report on the commodity hauled,” Pagnan said.
Statistics indicate that, on the whole, trucking accidents are de-creasing. Anecdotal evidence suggests that livestock transport incidents are declining, Pagnan noted.
Nevertheless, when a hog truck rolls into the ditch and pigs are scattered about the Trans-Canada Highway, it makes for a sensational news item, Woods said.
“When there is a livestock accident, it’s a much bigger story than a trailer full of toilet paper.”
As an example, when a truck loaded with meat horses crashed on Deerfoot Trail in Calgary several years ago, the media and the public went berserk, Woods noted.
“They had it all over the morning news. People were stopping their breakfast, hooking up their trailer and driving to save the horses.”
Since images on the evening news or on YouTube of a horse limping across a highway or a sow trapped under a trailer are so powerful, it’s hard to explain to the public that trucking companies and the livestock sector are making progress on animal welfare and safety, Pagnan said.
“When these incidents happen, they’re complicated. They involve many stakeholders and I do think it’s difficult to tell the entire story,” she said. “But it is something that many in the industry are working on, getting the message out on everything that is involved in these incidents and everything that is involved in the response.”
