Ben M G Janssen

Drs Ben M G Janssen MCDM is Managing Director of the Unified Industrial and Harbour Fire Department in Rotterdam and Chairman of the CTIF HazMat Commission’s operations working group. Drs Janssen studied chemistry and has a Masters Degree in Crisis Management. He has 28 years experience with HazMat incidents and spent 13 years in first response, dealing with 350 HazMat Incidents. The Unified Industrial and Harbour Fire Department in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is a public/private partnership which involves cooperation between the public fire service and 52 private companies to provide firefighting in the port and industrial area of Rotterdam (see CRJ Volume 1 Issue 2). It has five full-time stations, 135 full time firefighters, two volunteer fire stations and 62 volunteers. Rotterdam-Rijnmond is a complex area to protect, housing one of the largest and busiest ports in the world, with 35,000 seagoing and 125,000 inland waterway shipping movements. It also houses chemical companies, four refineries, 62 Seveso classified industries and many transport companies. One million tons of fireworks pass through the port of Rotterdam a year, raising questions of how to ensure the safety of such a large volume of potentially hazardous materials.