A local fire chief in a small rural town has neither knowledge or the experience to handle a train derailment involving hazardous materials. He should never been given the responsibility to manage this mess. He should have known better and told the RR that this was their mess, which it was.
The RR should have immediately taken over and called in their own responders.
Anyway, does anyone believe that the local fire chief of a department which couldn’t have been much more than a volunteer fire department, should have been left in charge/
That’s how it works with the national incident command system.
Every firefighter has to be on record as taken several of the courses.