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Donations help Hazmat fight propane incidents

Thanks to donations, the regional Hazmat team is ready to confront propane emergencies.

The Region V Hazardous Materials Response Team, part of the Fort Dodge Fire Department, received a large propane connector kit from Valero Renewables last summer. Funds from Calhoun County and the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool were used to buy a small propane connector kit. And in November, a Red Dragon propane flare was given by Jim Byson of J.P. Byson Oil Co., of Fort Dodge.

The team thanked Byson for his donation Wednesday.

Before this, “we had no equipment to deal with propane emergencies,” said Tom Ubben, hazmat team coordinator. “We relied on propane companies, like Jim.”

The two kits allow the team to attach the flare to pretty much any kind of propane tank, Ubben said. The larger B kit connects to stationary tanks, like those at farms or manufacturing facilities, while the smaller A kit connects to any tanks approved for a moving vehicle.

This lets the team members burn off propane to mitigate a leak, until they can plug or fix it.

“We’ve used it already, at an incident in Breda,” Ubben said. “Nobody had the equipment to take care of it. … We hooked this up and auto-refrigerated the tank; that brings the temperature down and we were able to put a new valve on.”

Letting the gas out of the tank fast enough cools the tank, and the pressure of the gas decreases.

“Otherwise that road would have been closed for days,” he said. “We were able to handle it in a few hours.”

The team also used the equipment during a two-day PropaneIQ training course in November.

Byson is also a volunteer firefighter in Barnum, Ubben said.

“He is a really convenient resource for us. He’s close, and he’s willing to help,” Ubben said. “He sat through our two day training.”

Ubben said the team was happy to get the equipment through grants and donations. The larger kit cost about $3,500, while the smaller kit cost $2,000 and the flare also cost $2,000.

Now that the team has this equipment, he hopes they’ll be called out whenever a local department needs help.

“It’s pretty exciting for us,” Ubben said. “Propane can be pretty dangerous.”

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