BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - State police say a new statewide training system will get roads reopened more quickly following accidents.
The Advocate reports (https://bit.ly/1kbUBSf ) the Traffic Incident Management system developed by the Federal Highway Administration is already in place in 33 states.
The system aims to make sure all first responders - police, fire, medical and even wrecker services - have the same training and information when arriving at an accident scene to streamline the process and reopen roads more quickly.
State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said the ever-evolving role of a first responder and the people who are considered first responders make this type of program critical to public safety.
“You take the larger incidents that have ever occurred, even the minor emergencies that occurred and if you critiqued those emergencies, what you’re going to learn is we need more communications, more pre-planning,” Browning said.
The training will help first responders statewide quickly determine the best course of action at a crash scene, including whether to close the road, what detours are best and when to remove wrecked vehicles from a road so it can be reopened to traffic, said Sgt. Nick Manale, a State Police spokesman.
The main purpose is to have first responders all following the same protocols at a crash scene since all first responders are not trained to handle crashes in the same manner, Manale said.
First responders will be pressed to relay information in to the people who need it the most urgently and in turn, those people can get the information out to the public quicker, Manale said.
“Everybody has to have this mindset that we need to work and be efficient,” he said.
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Information from: The Advocate, https://theadvocate.com
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