An Agency Most Firefighters Have Never Heard Of
When a chemical plant explodes, who figures out why? Not the fire department — they're focused on rescue and suppression. Not OSHA — they investigate workplace safety violations. Not the EPA — they handle environmental contamination. The agency that reconstructs what happened, identifies the root causes, and issues safety recommendations to prevent it from happening again is the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, commonly known as the CSB.
Most firefighters have never heard of it. Most of the public hasn't either. But over 25 years, the CSB has investigated more than 170 incidents and issued over 1,000 safety recommendations that have fundamentally changed how chemical facilities operate, how emergency responders approach hazmat incidents, and how communities protect themselves from industrial hazards.
In 2025, the CSB nearly ceased to exist.
The Funding Fight: A Timeline
As reported by the Washington Post, the administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 allocated zero dollars to the CSB and directed the agency to begin closure proceedings by the end of fiscal year 2025. This was not the first time the CSB's elimination had been proposed — similar zeroed-out budgets had been submitted in prior fiscal years — but the closure directive added a new level of urgency.
The rationale offered for elimination was that the CSB's functions overlapped with those of other agencies, including OSHA and the EPA. The CSB and its supporters contested this characterization, noting that neither OSHA nor the EPA conducts the kind of independent, root-cause investigations that are the CSB's core mission. OSHA investigates regulatory compliance. The EPA investigates environmental impact. The CSB investigates why the incident happened and how to prevent the next one.
Congress intervened. On January 23, 2026, a funding bill was signed that maintained the CSB's budget at $14 million — keeping the agency operational. The CSB survived, but the close call raised a pointed question: what happens when the next budget cycle rolls around?
Why Firefighters Should Care
If you've ever responded to a chemical facility incident — a leak, a fire, an explosion — the CSB's work has probably made your response safer, even if you didn't know it. CSB investigations produce detailed safety videos, technical reports, and recommendations that flow into NFPA standards, community emergency planning, and facility safety management systems.
The connection is direct. When the CSB investigates an explosion and determines that a specific type of pressure relief valve failed under conditions that the facility's hazard analysis didn't anticipate, that finding gets translated into updated engineering standards and emergency response protocols. The next time you roll up on a chemical facility, the emergency shutdown procedures, the placarding, the community notification systems — many of those exist because a CSB investigation identified a gap and recommended a fix.
For hazmat technicians, the CSB's incident reports are essential reference material. Understanding what went wrong at a chemical facility — the specific failure modes, the chemical interactions, the cascade of events — is exactly the kind of knowledge that keeps response teams alive during complex hazmat operations.
2025: A Year of Chemical Incidents
While the funding fight played out in Washington, chemical incidents continued to occur across the country. The 2025 record underscores why independent investigation capacity matters.
Horizon Biofuels — Fremont, Nebraska (July 29, 2025)
A fatal incident at the Horizon Biofuels facility in Fremont, Nebraska, killed a worker on July 29, 2025. The facility processes biofuel products, and the circumstances of the incident highlighted the hazards associated with emerging fuel production technologies — an area where established safety standards are still catching up to industry practice.
Accurate Energetic Systems — McEwen, Tennessee (October 10, 2025)
An explosion at Accurate Energetic Systems in McEwen, Tennessee, on October 10, 2025, resulted in fatalities. The facility manufactures energetic materials — explosives and propellants. Incidents at energetic materials facilities pose extreme risks to both workers and emergency responders due to the potential for secondary explosions during response operations.
US Steel — Clairton, Pennsylvania (September 2025)
An incident at the US Steel Clairton Works in Pennsylvania killed two workers in September 2025. The Clairton facility is one of the largest coke-producing plants in the United States, and the incident raised questions about maintenance practices and process safety management at aging industrial infrastructure.
Additional Notable Incidents
An ammonia leak in Mississippi during 2025 required community evacuation and a significant hazmat response. A fire at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, California, in October 2025 drew a major emergency response. And in Pennsylvania, a chemical plant explosion injured six firefighters — a direct illustration of how chemical facility incidents put fire service personnel at risk.
Into 2026, the pattern has continued. A five-alarm response to Crossfield Products in Roselle Park, New Jersey, in early 2026 demonstrated the ongoing reality of chemical facility fires in densely populated areas.
The Investigation Gap
Each of these incidents warrants thorough, independent investigation — not just to determine regulatory compliance, but to understand root causes and issue safety recommendations that prevent recurrence. That's what the CSB does, and it's what no other federal agency is structured to do.
Consider the difference. When OSHA investigates a chemical facility incident, the investigation is framed around whether the employer violated existing OSHA standards. If the employer was in technical compliance but the standards themselves were inadequate — or if the hazard wasn't covered by existing regulation — OSHA's investigation may find no violation even though workers died and firefighters were injured.
The CSB's mandate is different. It investigates root causes regardless of regulatory compliance. Its recommendations can target not just the facility operator, but also regulatory agencies, industry associations, and standards-setting organizations. The CSB can — and has — recommended that OSHA itself change its standards. No other agency has that independence.
For fire investigators, the CSB's methodology offers a model for root-cause analysis that goes beyond origin-and-cause determination to examine systemic factors. And for fire marshals who enforce codes in jurisdictions with chemical facilities, CSB findings directly inform the regulatory framework they work within.
The $14 Million Question
The CSB's entire annual budget is $14 million. For context, that's roughly the cost of two fire engines. It funds an agency of approximately 45 staff members — investigators, technical specialists, and support personnel — who respond to and investigate the most significant chemical incidents in the country.
The CSB does not issue fines. It does not have regulatory enforcement authority. It investigates, it finds root causes, and it makes recommendations. Since its creation in 1998, the agency's recommendations have driven changes in chemical facility safety that are difficult to quantify precisely because the measure of success is the disaster that didn't happen.
That's the challenge with prevention-focused agencies. Their success is invisible. You don't see the headline about the explosion that was prevented by a safety recommendation implemented after a CSB investigation. You only see the headline when the system fails.
What the Fire Service Can Do
The CSB's survival in the most recent budget cycle was not guaranteed. It required Congressional action — letters, testimony, advocacy from stakeholders who understood what the agency does and why it matters. The fire service is one of those stakeholders, and here's how you can engage.
For Individual Firefighters
- Know what the CSB does. Watch their investigation videos — they're freely available online and are exceptional training material for hazmat operations, incident command, and emergency planning. The CSB's visual investigation reports are among the best educational resources available for understanding chemical incident dynamics.
- Contact your representatives. When budget season comes around, a letter from a firefighter explaining how CSB recommendations have improved response safety carries weight. Representatives hear from industry lobbyists. They hear less often from the first responders who bear the direct consequences of chemical facility incidents.
For Chiefs and Department Leadership
- Incorporate CSB findings into pre-incident planning. If your jurisdiction includes chemical facilities, the CSB's investigation reports for similar facility types should be part of your pre-plan development. Understanding how incidents have unfolded at comparable facilities gives your officers better situational awareness on arrival.
- Engage with your Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC). LEPCs are the link between chemical facility operators and emergency responders at the community level. CSB recommendations frequently address LEPC processes, community notification systems, and emergency response coordination.
- Support the CSB through professional organizations. The International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Fire Fighters, and other fire service organizations have advocacy infrastructure that can amplify the fire service's voice on federal budget issues.
Following the Policy Chain
The CSB's near-elimination is part of a broader pattern in which specialized technical agencies face funding pressure during budget negotiations. Understanding this pattern matters because the CSB is not the only agency whose work directly affects firefighter safety. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which investigates firefighter line-of-duty deaths, operates under similar budget constraints. The U.S. Fire Administration, which collects and analyzes fire incident data, has faced its own funding challenges.
These agencies exist because the fire service's operating environment is shaped by factors beyond any individual department's control — chemical facility operations, building codes, occupational health standards, incident data systems. When the agencies that monitor and improve those systems lose funding, the consequences show up on the fireground.
The policy chain connects a budget line item in Washington to the hazmat technician entering a chemical facility in protective equipment designed around standards informed by CSB investigations. Cut the budget, and that chain breaks. Not immediately. Not visibly. But inevitably.
The Bottom Line
The CSB survived 2025. It's operational in 2026 with $14 million in funding. But the structural vulnerability remains. An agency that has investigated over 170 incidents and issued over 1,000 safety recommendations — recommendations that have directly improved the safety of firefighters, workers, and communities — operates year to year without assured funding.
Forty-five people doing work that no other agency in the federal government is designed to do, at a cost that would barely register in most municipal fire department budgets. The math is straightforward. The consequences of getting it wrong are not.
Chemical facility safety intersects with multiple fire service career paths. Learn more about becoming a hazmat technician, fire investigator, or fire marshal.