Your Respondersafety.com team has been very busy over the past couple of months. Your Project Director, Steve Austin and I staffed out booth at the Fire Department Instructor's Conference out in Indianapolis. We were ably assisted by a number of fine folks. Our Training Director, Jack Sullivan was there, as were Jack Peltier from the Massachusetts Fire Training Academy, Mike Chiarmonte, of the IAFC, and Jim Cubbage from the Delaware Volunteer Fireman's Association. We once again got to meet some really fine people. It is becoming obvious that the word is getting out around the world that there is a problem. There are periods of relative quiet when it seems like we are making progress. Then suddenly we see something as astounding as the man who just ran over five volunteer firefighters as they were operating on a highway in Alabama. The man drove past them as they worked to help a motorist, then simple put his car in reverse and backed into their truck running over all five of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to impress you at this point with one simple fact of life. There are nut cases out there running loose in the world. Each time you set up shop on the highway, you have to consider that someone may be out there looking to settle a score with someone. You might not be that someone, but you do provide an easy target. Add to this the number of impaired drivers who are on booze or drugs, and you can see that great danger rolls past you as you seek to do good works.

I would like to salute the efforts of one of the members of the Cumberland Valley Volunteer Fireman's Emergency Responder Safety Institute, Allen Baldwin. Allen works as the Incident Manager for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He is responsible for emergency response operation on the entire turnpike.

During the week of May 17 his staff conducted a series of five highway safety educational seminars across the state of Pennsylvania. These seminars were created and conducted so that the message of highway safety could be brought to the fore in the Keystone State. The seminars brought together members of a number of stakeholders in the highway safety response equation.

Allen's efforts to create a "team approach" to the highway safety problem are to be commended. Demonstration of helicopter emergency evacuation operations were held, as well as displays of locally available emergency response equipment.

One of the statistics that caught my attention was the one which stated that on a busy day, anywhere from 150 to 200 incidents can occur on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Picture that as scores of opportunities for emergency workers, and turnpike maintenance workers to be struck by passing motorists.

Like I said earlier, there are impaired people out there all around us and they are not wearing signs or sporting specially-lit vehicles with signs saying, "This vehicle being operated by an impaired driver: watch out!" When you add to this list those people who just do not pay attention to the world around them, the potential for tragedy becomes mind-boggling.

More people need to get involved. There are no exemptions granted here. Each of us who sets up and then operates in a highway safety emergency zone has a stake in the outcome of our educational efforts.

We look forward to meeting you in Baltimore at the Firehouse Expo. Stay with us as we continue our journey to a safer world.