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ERNS was last updated on RTK NET with a copy updated as of July 2004, and includes incidents from 1982 through 2003. Only the last reporting year of data, 2003, has been updated with this latest data set: the earlier years were saved from a previous set of ERNS data.
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.
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.
CHRIS Codes are used to denote common materials that are transported within the U.S. You can look up a list of the CHRIS code used within ERNS here. CHRIS codes are populated within ERNS data for all years.
Fill in the name of the county or city that you want - do not fill in the word "county" after counties. Some submissions have their county or city misspelled; others have two varient spellings for the same city or county. For instance, the city of St. Louis can be spelled either ST. LOUIS or SAINT LOUIS. If you think this may be a factor, you can either run your search twice or use "*" as a wildcard. In the case above you could enter "S*LOUIS" and find both spellings. Watch out for FORT/FT., SAINT/ST., and MOUNT/MT.
Note that the city and county fields in the Area and Material searches refer to the location of the incident, and the city filed in the Discharger search refers to the location of the suspected responsible party for the incident. The two can be differenct in certain cases, for instance, when the discharger owns a shipment of chemicals that is involved in a transportation accident.
The city and county data are not filled in for reporting years before 1987. Therefore, if you fill in a city or county, your search will not retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1986.
The default setting of this field does not change the incidents retrieved by your search in any way.
This field selects the level of detail you want in your report. The "level of detail" is another name for a predetermined set of data fields. This option lets you display either a brief summary set of fields, one of two intermediate sets, or all the data fields in the database.
This field selects what output style your report will have:
Further help on delimited reports is available.
"Discharger" is a synonym for "suspected responsible party". The discharger name is usually the name of a business or a governmental entity.
Warning: discharger names are often misspelled. You should
enter as few letters as are necessary to specify it,
followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters.
Example: You want to find incidents with suspected responsible party Du Pont.
Possible spellings of discharger name:
In order to help users who don't use wildcards, the program will place a wildcard after whatever you type in to this field automatically. That's because it's almost never right to leave a trailing wildcard out; even if you know the exact name, you don't know whether ACME has been entered into the database as ACME INC. or ACME CO.
The discharger name has only been filled in for incident records going back through 1987. Therefore, if you fill in a discharger name, your search will never retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1986.
Incidents within ERNS have been classified by type, and this search field allows you to restrict your search to one of the types listed. Selecting "all types" does not affect your search.
Incident types were only filled in for data extending back through 1990, so if you chose an incident type, your search will not retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1989.
Incidents within ERNS have been classified by likely cause, and this search field allows you to restrict your search to one of the causes listed. Note that about 35% of the incidents in the database have no listed cause, and won't be retrieved if you chose anything but "All causes" for this field.
Incident causes were only filled in for data extending back through 1990, so if you chose an incident cause, your search will not retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1989.
Fill in the name of the material you are interested in, for instance OIL or SULFURIC ACID. Note that names of materials in the database are not spelled in a standard fashion, so you should probably use *'s as wildcards. For instance, oil spills could be listed as WASTE OIL or as OIL NO. 15. If you simply filled in OIL you would find records with neither of these spellings; if you filled in *OIL* you would find them both. The name of material field is filled in for all years of ERNS data.
This field lets you chose one of the U.S. states. Note that the Area and Material searches use the state in which the incident took place, while the Discharger search uses the state in which the discharger is located.
State locations of dischargers (suspected responsible parties) are only filled in back through 1987, so if you fill in a state in a Discharger search, you will not retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1986. States in locations of incidents are filled in for all years of ERNS data.
The Reporting Year, in ERNS, is the year in which the incident was reported. The data field has been created by RTK NET by taking the year in the notification (call) date. You can enter an individual year or a year range; you can not enter both. If you enter a year range, you must enter both halves of it, and the second half must be later than the first.
Note that the reporting years retrieved may be implicitly limited by your search when you search by fields that were not filled in in the early years of ERNS. This can affect incidents in reporting years before 1990, depending on which fields are involved in your search. Each of the search fields has its own notation in this help file that mentions which early reporting years it was not filled in for.
The original data from the Coast Guard site is divided into years, and these are generally what RTK NET treats as "reporting years". However, in ERNS, one of the sub-components of an incident -- the part detailing the call recordkeeping and suspected responsible party info -- is often marked as having a year one later than the rest of the data for the incident. It is unclear why this occurs. However, it means that some of this information is missing for incidents in reporting year 2003, since parts of those incidents will only be released by the Coast Guard as part of the 2004 data.
The Zip code field lets you search by 5-digit or 9-digit Zip codes. A wildcard will automatically be placed after any 5-digit Zip code that you type in, so that your search will automatically find any 9-digit Zip code beginning with those 5 digits.
The only searchable Zip code in ERNS is the Suspected Responsible Party Zip code, which is searchable through the Discharger search. It was not filled in prior to 1987, so a search using it will not retrieve incidents from 1982 through 1986.
Additional help is available through the help file associated with ERNS standard report output.