Webinar Thursday On Natural Gas/Emergency Services

The boom in natural-gas drilling has presented some Pennsylvania counties with public-safety concerns, and an online seminar offered by Penn State Extension at 1 pm Thursday, March 17, will highlight them. In his presentation, “Natural Gas Well Development and Emergency Response and Management,” Lycoming County’s Craig Konkle will discuss the precautions his county has taken.

Konkle, operations and training supervisor for the Lycoming County Department of Public Safety and chairman of the Lycoming County Gas Task Force Safety Committee, is on the front line in dealing with the challenges the drilling expansion is presenting to municipalities. Thursday’s webinar will include suggestions for safety committees created by county-based natural gas task forces and the development of a training and safety consortium, comprised of representatives from the gas industry and emergency responders.

“I will discuss the mission of the consortium, which is to develop a practical, reliable and competent community emergency-response capacity,” Konkle said. “We want to create an industry-wide perspective of needed training, so we explored industry expectations for the responder community, and then looked for gaps and determined how to fill them.”

The webinar will also address training for responders, suggestions to help responders and industry personnel remain safe in the field, and past incidents, Konkle noted.

Information about how to register for the webinar is available on the webinar page of Penn State Extension’s natural gas impacts website. Those planning to participate are advised to sign on early, as the process can take several minutes. Previous webinars, publications and information on topics such as water use and quality, zoning, gas-leasing considerations for landowners and implications for local communities also are available at that site.