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ERNS was last updated on RTK NET with a copy updated as of September, 2009, and includes incidents from 1982 through 2008.
The ERNS (Emergency Response Notification System) database is a database of incidents reported to the National Response Center. These incidents include chemical spills, accidents involving chemicals (such as fires or explosions), oil spills, transportation accidents that involve oil or chemicals, releases of radioactive materials, sightings of oil sheens on bodies of water, terrorist incidents involving chemicals, incidents where illegally dumped chemicals have been found, and drills intended to prepare responders to handle these kinds of incidents. The National Repsonse Center is operated by the U.S. Coast Guard, and has become the central point of contact of contact used for the reporting of many different kinds of incidents involving hazardous materials.
ERNS data can be obtained through a Coast Guard site at www.nrc.uscg.mil. Links at that site, under "Services", will permit you to search the data through a form or to download it. Note that this database is probably no longer really called "ERNS". That was its name when it was being provided to the public by EPA; public presentation of it was taken over by the Coast Guard at some time near 2000 and now it is presented simply as FOIAed NRC data. There is currently a hidden link from EPA to a downloadable copy of the data by EPA region at www.nrc.uscg.mil/erns/epa.html.
Coast Guard publicly provided documentation of the data is minimal, and Coast Guard personnel have not responded to RTK NET's Emails and calls requesting additional clarification. Therefore, some fields on our system are labelled as having an unknown meaning. In addition, the data is distributed by the Coast Guard in a delimited format with unmarked delimiter characters within the data, making some lines of data unreadable. RTK NET has attempted to fix these problems, but for a few incidents, some data may be incomplete because not all of the parts of each incident could be loaded.
The data from 1990 through 2003 are in a common format. Data from 1982 through 1989 are available, but were provided in varying formats, with different data fields for each year. RTK NET has converted these data, as far as possible, into a common format. However, caution should be taken when doing searches that extend back prior to 1990, for some incidents may not show up in a search because the data for that year do not include the data field that is being searched. The RTK NET documentation on individual fields shows the range of years that each was reported within.
Drills (incidents that didn't really occur, but served as practise for emergency responders, including getting records in ERNS) are not retrieved in RTK NET searches.
There are a few important terms that are used in a specialized fashion within this documentation:
In general, the ERNS database holds a core of information about each incident, with varying additional information that can be filled in depending on the type of incident (vehicle IDs for incidents involving cars or trucks, storage tank size for incidents involving storage tanks, etc.) Each incident is associated with one or more materials released during the incident, or otherwise contributing to it. Quantities of material released are not reported in common units, so these quantities can not be summed up over multiple incidents. However, the ERNS database contains very valuable free text description of incidents, which often offers the best way to understand what is going on with each.
Warning: Although information about these incidents was recorded in a standard form, many incidents were reported through phone calls, and may represent incorrect information given during an event. Some phone calls are from bystanders who may not have good information about what is occurring. In general, the Coast Guard does not corrent ERNS notifications after the fact, as better information becomes available (except perhaps for the most important incidents. There is an EPA database, ARIP, that hold updated information about some of the most serious incidents reported in ERNS. However, it is a survey, and has not been updated by EPA in recent years.
ERNS used to have the problem of multiple phone calls referring to the same event. This would result in the same event having multiple records in the database. The Coast Guard appears to have worked to eliminate the duplicates. However, the exact state of progress in eliminating this problem is unknown to RTK NET.
Area reports are intended to help you find out about all incidents that took place within a geographic area - a city, county, or state. If you are looking for information for a city, you should not fill in the county unless there are multiple cities with the same name in your state. The search does not let you search on Zip code, because incident locations rarely have reliable zip codes. You must fill in a state to use this report.
Note that this search uses the fields that specify the location of the incident, not the location of the discharger. The two might be different if, for instance, the discharger (suspected responsible party) owns chemicals that are involved in an accident during transport.
The state location data field is populated back through 1982, but the city and county location data fields are only populated back through 1987. Therefore, if you fill in a city or county, your search will never find incidents from 1982 through 1986.
Discharger reports are intended to help you find out about all incidents that had a particular discharger, or suspected responsible party. You can specify a discharger name, city, state, or zip code. A discharger name is required, but you can use asterisks as wildcards, for instance, "A*" would find any incident with a suspected responsible party name beginning with A.
Note that this search uses the fields that specify the location of the discharger, not the location of the incident. The two might be different if, for instance, the discharger (suspected responsible party) owns chemicals that are involved in an accident during transport.
The discharger name, city, state and zip code fields are populated back through 1987. Therefore, this report will not let you retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1986, because you must search for at least a discharger name, and for 1986 and before the discharger name is never filled in.
Material reports are intended to help you find out about incidents involving a particular material or chemical. You can specify a material by its name or its CHRIS Code; one or the other is required. If you specify a material by its name, you should use asterisks as wildcards, for instance, "*OIL*" would find any material name with the letters "OIL" somewhere in it. You can also restrict your search to incidents that took place within a state, county, or city. Note that the state, county, and city fields refer to areas where the incident took place, not to the locations of suspected responsible parties for the incidents.
The material name and CHRIS code data fields are populated back through 1982, as is the location state. However, the city and county location data fields are only populated back through 1987, so if you fill in a city or county, your search will not find incidents from 1982 through 1986.
All of the standard reports permit you to search by reporting year, for incidents involving damages only, by incident type, and by incident cause. In addition, you can control the output of your search by choosing the level of detail, type of output, and Email address if any. Each of these options is explained in more detail in the next section.
If you have any questions, comments, or found any bugs in these reports please either send RTK NET mail to rtkhelp@rtknet.org or call us at 202-234-8494.
Additional help is available through the help file associated with ERNS standard report output.