The Renewable Fuels Association has received a TRANSCAER National Achievement Award for hosting its series of seminars last year on ethanol safety and emergency responders. This is the fourth year in a row that RFA has been awarded this honor, further underscoring the commitment to public safety of RFA member companies.

The TRANSCAER National Achievement Award is given in recognition of extraordinary achievement by an individual person, company, organization or a team in support of the TRANSCAER initiative. TRANSCAER is a volunteer coalition that works to ensure our nation’s emergency responders and their communities are educated with the most up-to-date information and are prepared to handle hazardous material incidents.

In 2015, RFA held 15 ethanol safety seminars and two train-the-trainer events, which trains emergency responders on how to properly respond to an ethanol incident. Those events collectively trained 541 first responders.

Additionally, RFA Technical Services Manager Missy Ruff received a TRANSCAER Individual Achievement Award for her work last year in planning the ethanol safety events.

“We are honored to receive this award for the fourth year in a row, and for Missy’s outstanding work in coordinating these essential events,” said RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen. “Safety is the ethanol industry’s top priority, and while recent data shows ethanol has been delivered 99.999 percent of the time without incident, we know accidents can happen. We want first responders to be prepared in the rare instance a release occurs.”

Since December 2010, RFA has held 167 ethanol safety seminars spanning 29 states, training more than 5,000 emergency responders.