AUSTINTOWN — Silverio Caggiano, newly retired Youngstown Fire Department battalion chief, will discuss hazards involved in the transport and disposal of waste products from the oil and gas industry.

The event, sponsored by the Youngstown Torch Club, is 6 p.m. Wednesday at Perkins Restaurant, 5550 Interstate Blvd. (state Route 46).

Tom Welsh, an officer with the club, said it was chartered in 1927 with Rabbi I.E. Philo, a spiritual leader with Congregation Rodef Sholom serving as the first president. Since then, the society has grown with members coming from civic and religious organizations, professionals, educators and entrepreneurs.

“In recent years, Youngstown State University’s faculty has been well represented in the club, but it does not have an exclusive relationship with the university,” he said.

He also mentioned that the name should not be confused with the establishment in the city, recently in the news following a mass shooting.

“The club has no association with The Torch Club nightclub on Youngstown’s West Side,” Welsh said. “Given the recent tragedy there, the shared name is an unfortunate coincidence.”

He said the Youngstown Torch Club is simply an organization of professional people who gather once per month to listen to a presentation while enjoying dinner, fellowship and stimulating conversation.

WEDNESDAY

The Wednesday program is titled, “The Oil and Gas Industry: A Dangerous Game of Hide and Seek.”

Caggiano, a retired Youngstown Fire Department Battalion Chief with 40 years of experience, is a 1979 Ursuline High School graduate who went on to YSU to study biology. He graduated from the Canton Aultman paramedic program in 1985 and attended many other classes, including the Ohio Fire Academy for firefighter training, fire instructor and hazardous materials technician and instructor. He has taken classes on subjects such as incident command, terrorism, threat credibility assessment, nuclear, explosives, rail car incidents, bioterrorism, evidence collection and forensic epidemiology — to name a few.

He started with the Youngstown Fire Department on April 20, 1982.

Caggiano said he got into HazMat in 1991. HazMat teams started in 1986 as a result of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, also known as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know law.

“By 1991 HazMat was still in its infancy, and I was still a firefighter at the time,” he said.

He went on to become a specialist and consultant in hazardous materials, serving as an active member of the Ohio HazMat Weapons of Mass Destruction Advisory Committee.

WASTE PRODUCTS

With a lifetime of knowledge under his belt, Caggiano is able to address several issues of concern, such as the oil and gas waste products that come into the area.

“Since Pennsylvania and New York have restricted their waste sites, Ohio has become the dumping ground for well drilling done in those states as well as our own,” he said. “The injection wells and above-ground dumps seem to pop up in low-income areas — places that can ill afford lawyers to fight the companies … ”

He said most of the waste travels by truck, which brings on its own problems.

“These trucks have drivers that are not HazMat trained and have no idea what they are hauling,” Caggiano said. “If you or I owned a trucking company and we had a 55-gallon drum of what is inside their trucks, we would have to have certifications and drivers trained to HAZWOPER standards. Free pass to the oil and gas industry on all that.”

Looking at the issue from the fire department’s perspective, there are even more problems.

“That’s the kicker, you cannot prepare for what you don’t know about,” he said. “I would say the major concern with the frack waste is nuclear, but there is also a chemical contamination issue. And if you don’t know what the 11 secret herbs and spices are in the recipe, you’re flying blind.”

He said he got into learning about fracking while attending an informational meeting at YSU on legislation working its way through Ohio in 2012.

“My HazMat chief and I wanted to attend that meeting to show a presence for the community and to find out if it was true that first responders and local area planning committees were not entitled to material safety data sheets on what chemicals were at the well sites,” Caggiano said. “That was a huge departure from the norm. Unfortunately the rumors were true.

“That’s when I jumped down the rabbit hole and the learning began as I met all the characters … hidden reports, untrained truck drivers, secret chemicals, bought and paid for Ohio legislators and much, much more.”

He said the oil and gas industry would say it is overregulated.

But he also noted: “Mahoning County has been mostly spared from the horizontal frack boom for now, but we are making up for that in the waste department,” he said. “We strongly suspect many incidents go unreported, and we have no idea what’s going on at our dumps.”

Wednesday’s program is open to the public, but guests will be responsible for their own refreshments. For further information, contact club secretary Linda Porter at 330-792-7351.