Emergency drill at Alameda Corridor Sunday

   This Sunday emergency response agencies around the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex will conduct a full-scale exercise that will provide a “vivid depiction of a unified command working together on a simulated incident” inside the Alameda Corridor.
   The drill, which will take place between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., will include the L.A. Fire Department, L.A. County Fire Department, Vernon Fire Department, Compton Fire Department, L.A. Police Department, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway and representatives of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA).
   “The exercise will simulate the sighting of smoke from a well car on a train in the Alameda Corridor trench, a fire on one of the cars, a leaking tank car and injured railroad personnel. The objective of the drill is to improve unified command, communications, hazardous materials operations and command operations to an incident inside the Alameda Corridor,” the agencies said.
   The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile dedicated freight expressway linking the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the rail network near downtown Los Angeles. The corridor, which opened in 2002, was built by ACTA, a joint powers authority governed by the cities and ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 2012, the Alameda Corridor handled about 42 trains per day, each train about one and a half miles long (about 300 containers per train).