When the West Virginia Manufacturers Association pitched an idea for a new Hazmat Good Samaritan law to legislators on Monday, we thought that sounded like a pretty good idea.
Once upon a time, back in the 1980s and 1990s, chemical companies used to send resources and professionals to help firefighters with blazes involving chemicals or hazardous materials. Many of those companies still have emergency response teams, with experts and specialized equipment riding on hazmat trucks. But they don’t send those teams off-property anymore.
Companies began to fear being sued, so they stopped sending resources. If fire departments call, onsite experts are happy to offer advice, but they won’t go to the scene of the incident.
Which is why the WVMA is proposing a new Good Samaritan law to protect chemical companies and their employees from litigation if they help fire departments put out fires or clean up spills involving hazardous materials.
Good Samaritan laws generally protect individuals who offer medical assistance to someone in an emergency from being sued, so long as the Samaritan’s actions are done in good faith. For example, in states with Good Samaritan laws, the victim of a car wreck can’t sue a bystander who tried to help by removing them from the car but accidentally caused more damage in the process. A Hazmat Good Samaritan law would allow companies to send resources, equipment and professionals to aid fire departments without fear of getting sued if something goes wrong.
On the surface, this seems like a very good idea. There are a lot of chemical plants in West Virginia. There are also a lot of trucks transporting hazardous materials along winding, twisting, steep — and too often crumbling — roads. Should an accident happen, we would want first responders to have every tool available to them to get spills cleaned up and fires put out quickly and with as little damage as possible. If having hazardous materials experts on speed dial and at the ready to assist is one more tool we can offer them, then we should.
But as we learned about the WVMA’s proposal, we couldn’t shake a vague sense of unease.
And as we discussed the proposed law as a board, the unease coalesced into specific images: a blaze at a warehouse in Parkersburg raging for days in 2017; a chemical plant explosion that rocked the tiny town of Belle in 2020; thousands of gallons of chemicals spilling into the Elk River in 2014.
So while we do support a Hazmat Good Samaritan law, we firmly believe it must be limited: If a fire or spill is caused by a chemical company’s negligence or misconduct (or that of its employees), and that company aids first responders in the clean-up, the company cannot use the Good Samaritan law to avoid repercussions for causing the fire or spill in the first place.
