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19 July 2024
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Featured FRI Magazine article: Commanding a hazardous materials emergency – some random thoughts by Colin Deiner (FRI Vol 2 no 6)
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This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Commanding a hazardous materials emergency – some random thoughts written by Colin Deiner, chief director, Disaster management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Government (FRI Vol 2 no 6). We will be sharing more technical/research/tactical articles from Fire and Rescue International magazine on a weekly basis with our readers to assist in technology transfer. This will hopefully create an increased awareness, providing you with hands-on advice and guidance. All our magazines are available free of charge in PDF format on our website and online at ISSUU. We also provide all technical articles as a free download in our article archive on our website.
Commanding a hazardous materials emergency – some random thoughts
By Colin Deiner, chief director, Disaster management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Government
In a previous article I dealt with the steps needed to be followed in establishing a hazmat team in a fire service. In this article, it is assumed that your department already has a hazmat capability and is called upon to respond to incidents involving hazardous materials.
This is not a concise standard operating procedure for hazmat response (there are enough text books on this). What I hope you will get out of this article is some extra food for thought about how you manage your hazardous materials responses and hopefully some ideas on improving on it.
Initial response
The time honoured phrase ‘every incident is a hazmat incident until proved otherwise’ is true and should always be uppermost in the minds of responders. This, to an extent, leads me to my next thought, which is that the vast majority of hazmat incidents that you will respond to will not require you to have a minimum of twelve crew members, entry teams dressed up in level A, fully encapsulated, gas-tight personal protective equipment (PPE) and establish a 15-stage decontamination line prior to making that first entry.
By understanding the product and its properties, you will be able to make a quick assessment of the risk involved and be able to formulate an action plan in a relatively short space of time.
How do you do this?
Firstly, try to determine state of the product involved ie solid, liquid or vapour. Obviously, a vapour or volatile liquids would constitute the highest risk. Is it a pressure or non-pressure vessel? Do you detect any vapours around the container?
If you receive a call from the product owner or company transporting it, you should be able to determine its identity and properties quite easily. You can also identify the product by its container shape or label. If you have no information and are not are sure of what material is involved, try to identify the above facts from a safe distance. How many fire services still have a good pair of binoculars on their first response vehicles and Hazmat units for this purpose?
We unfortunately have to contend with the many other services who respond to accidents involving hazardous materials on our roads and who have a) no hazmat training; b) no PPE; c) no idea (in many cases). This does making parking a safe distance away and trying to identify the product while five other services are already on top of the scene seem a bit foolish. As I have mentioned many times before, it is up to us as hazmat first responders to make contact with our brothers and sisters in other services and agencies and plan our responses to these incidents properly. With the kind of communication devices available to us today, we should be able to convey the message of a possible hazardous materials presence at an accident scene to all responders quite easily. I’m sure the D-Day Normandy invasion would never have worked if the Germans had Twitter! If you have gone the extra mile and worked through some hazardous materials awareness training with the local police, EMS, vehicle recovery and roads maintenance people, they should all respect the system and also stage themselves in a safe area until the ‘all clear’ is given.
It is always a big decision to close a freeway or major route but if necessary, the decision must be taken. As the knowledgeable person on scene, the incident commander should use his/her legislative mandate to deny entry for as long as it is necessary and should have the courage of his/her convictions to stay with the decision. Remember that an inconvenience is temporary. Death is forever.
Other important clues as to the properties of the materials involved and to better clarify the hazards involved will include container marking, placards, labels, shipping papers and material safety data sheets (MSDSs).
Ultimately, the best source of information on the product will be the manufacturer. Responsible manufacturers generally have an all-hours helpline that will provide extensive information on the product, its properties and reactivity under certain conditions and how to manage it once it has been released from its container. Unfortunately, you will find that in many instances the number provided for emergency assistance may be useless if the incident happens after office hours, which it inevitably does. It is for this reason that you have all the other options available to you. Chemical databases are either commercially available or can be downloaded as open source software on the internet such as the ‘Wiser’ chemical hazard information system. The ones that cost you money will obviously be more specific and provide you with more details and will definitely be worth the investment.
The key here is to gather all the information you, as incident commander, would need to allow you to commit responders to the incident. The first entry team can then confirm or adjust the information when they enter.
Reconnaissance
The product involved in the incident will dictate the level of protection to be utilised. Considering that the first team to enter the incident site will be a reconnaissance team and will not be utilised to do positive intervention work in the hot zone, it may not be necessary for them to have the highest level of protection at this stage. During the initial recon, the focus should primarily be on respiratory protection and the team should at the very least have adequate protection in this area.
Your standard turn-out gear should be adequate if you are dealing with a flammable, explosive or reactive substance. If it is a toxic material, your level of protection should be a level A gas-tight suit. Fortunately, not many products are flammable and toxic however, when you do get to the incident where you might be dealing with such a substance, you need to be sure you have the correct protection.
Your recon team should primarily be allocated the following tasks:
• Further identification/confirmation of the product involved;
• Risk evaluation;
• Rescue needs determination;
• Product control measures to be implemented and
• Identification of safe zones and evacuation routes.
In order to achieve all of this, the recon team should have the necessary monitoring equipment. This should include pH paper, a four gas detector, photo ionisation device, temperature measuring detector and if radiation risks are anticipated, a radiological meter. By having a good understanding of the purpose of each one of these devices and taking careful note of the environment into which you are moving, you will be able to make an accurate investigation of what products are involved and what level of protection would be required to deal with them.
Entering an area assumed to be flammable, explosive or reactive, you might consider your standard bunker gear to be sufficient. By using the pH paper on any encountered liquids you can ascertain whether it is corrosive. This could badly damage your bunker gear and cause severe injuries. Your recon team should withdraw from that point immediately.
Remember to always have enough chemical tape at hand when using bunker gear for hazmat response. By taping up the space between your gloves and sleeves and also the front of your bunker jacket you are immediately providing extra protection to your teams entering the incident site.
The array of detection equipment carried by the recon team should provide sufficient clues as to the presence of organic vapours, radiation, exothermic reactivity and flammability. Any warnings provided by any of the equipment during the recon phase should signal an immediate withdrawal to a safe zone. If this does not happen, the recon team should take careful note of the readings at each identified point and report them as they go along. Upon returning to the cold zone the recon team should make as detailed report as possible to the incident commander on all their findings including the labelling on any containers, shapes of containers etc.
Whereas in the past, hazmat responders have always responded with a ‘worst case scenario’ in mind, we know that this is in most services no longer possible. Services today do no longer have the budgets to equip and maintain multiple hazmat units strategically placed in their operational areas. In many cases nowadays, services tend to identify which first due pumpers would most likely respond to hazmat incidents and then equip these units with a limited amount of product control materials and some (usually level B) chemical protection. We do however, have to understand that we need highly trained individuals to man these vehicles and that their input in the recon phase of a hazardous materials incident could mean the difference between a relatively minor incident and a potential disaster.
Finally: your recon team cannot work in isolation. At the very least you need to ensure that before the recon team enters the incident site that you at least have an incident commander and safety officer present and one hose line deployed to act as an emergency decon team and double as a rescue back-up for the recon team. As the incident command system escalates and more units arrive, the required positions must be filled and all sectors, which will include safety, operations, decon, medical, information etc, must be established.
A word on personal protection
As mentioned above, you will only have to deploy full level A protection in only a small minority of incidents. If the day comes when you have to do so, you must understand that there are no shortcuts.
I have often walked through fire stations housing hazmat units and upon taking a look at the PPE available been interested to note that although the unit has a fair amount of level A suits, there is little other to support this garment, except maybe a hard hat and standard breathing apparatus.
Firstly, when a hazmat technician starts kitting up to enter a scene, he/she will need to have adequate breathing air to support the time spent waiting to enter the hot zone after the suit has been zipped up and sealed off with chemical tape, time spent entering and working in the hot zone and then finally time spent exiting the hot zone and going through the decon procedure. The standard open-circuit, structural breathing apparatus is not going to do it, considering your maximum working time is approximately 20 minutes. For this you need to consider an airline system or longer duration breathing apparatus cylinder. An airline system is restricted by its length; the actual airline could present a snag hazard and you will need to run in excess of six lines to support all your entry teams. It is, however, the best source for continuous air throughout the incident. The composite-construction breathing apparatus cylinder will give you a longer working time but is also limited if your team is compromised through time in any way while in the hot zone. The solution: an airline for provision of primary air with a breathing apparatus to be used as a back-up.
There are also many recent innovations such as the rapid fill devices available from some suppliers that enable the wearer to quickly hook up to an air source and replenish his/her supply. The problem here is that if that supply is at a staging area and you are in the hot zone, you will need to go through a decon procedure first before being able to access the source.
In many parts of South Africa temperatures could go up to the mid-to-high thirties (and even higher) on a summers day. Wearing a gas-tight level A suit in this temperature will rapidly fatigue the wearer and cause him/her to possibly lose consciousness. Various types of cooling vests consisting of ice packs fitted into an undergarment are available. These will provide adequate protection although the ice will melt after a while. The time should however, be sufficient for the wearer to achieve his/her objectives.
Talking of hot days. Make sure you have enough cotton under gloves available for wearers to put on under their suit gloves to ensure that their hands are kept dry at all times. The weakest part of the level A suit are in two places: the seams and the gloves. A durable chemical resistant ‘overglove’ will be needed to be placed over the suit glove to protect against any mechanical damage.
All of the above makes for a very hot, very stressed fire fighter who should be well trained to work in this environment and become used to seemingly trivial things such as managing their airline, working with three layers of gloves on their hands etc.
A clever idea would be for suit wearers to stick a few strips of duct tape or chemical tape to their suits somewhere around their sleeves or another place that is easily accessible. Should you have to pick anything up that has been dropped and will pose a problem while you are wearing three gloves, simply pull one of the strips off your suit, stick it to the tool you need to pick up and voila.
My final thought on chemical protection: if an incident requires the use of level A protection, it is important that your rescue team and decon team is also wearing level A protection. You can’t have them set up in a safe space adequately distant from the hot zone in turn-out gear only to have people in contaminated suits bring the methyl-ethyl bad stuff to them.
Incident command
As with fire attack the most important initial decision the incident commander will have to make is whether to go defensive or offensive. Deciding to go offensive might be as simple as entering the hot zone and isolating a valve. You must appreciate that this simple task will carry with it a whole range of other skill sets that, if neglected and not executed properly, could lead to serious injury or death. Responders need to correctly don their PPE, manage their air supply while moving through a confined area, perform technical work in a highly restrictive garment and proceed through a multi-stage decontamination system.
When operating in offensive mode, always anticipate that it is a dynamic situation and that things could change very quickly. When dealing with an overturned truck transporting compressed gas, anticipate that damage to the pressurised container could cause a sudden rupture that could subsequently lead to an immediate and rapid release of extremely cold or extremely flammable gas that will harm everything and everyone it touches. The tension that might be created when uprighting a vehicle that has ended up on its side, could cause the necessary distortion of the tank to make it go boom. Similarly, a vehicle transporting flammable liquid needs to have its batteries isolated to ensure that no accidental movement or fire happens during product control work.
I have mentioned scene control earlier but would just like to add that it must be ensured that when a decision is made that an area is out of bounds, measures are put in place to positively ensure that NO ONE enters the area. This will mean that more must be done than taping the area off with barrier tape. Law enforcement officers might have to be placed in strategic positions to ensure this.
Some simple ideas may be very useful in dealing with minor incidents and this should be explored further (more of this later). In a major incident however, a wide range of equipment and resources might be needed that might not be readily available. The operations section must ensure that all this equipment must be available before commencement of operations and account for the safety of personnel.
Medical sector
Prior to entry into the hot zone all responders must undergo a proper medical screening. This will be made much easier if staff is on a good health and wellness programme and good records are kept on them throughout their careers.
The medical sector manager must have information relevant to the health hazards of the product involved and the required emergency care. He/she must also be capable of communicating with the chemical manufacturer, local hospital emergency room staff and representatives from the local poison control centre. Some responders may be nervous when dealing with a chemical they are encountering for the first time and must therefore be confident in this person's ability to manage patient care effectively.
The medical officer will also ensure that patients are decontaminated prior to receiving any further medical care and as always must exercise close control over all the medical people assigned to his/her sector and ensure that they don’t lose focus and zero in on a single patient. He/she must be organised, disciplined and capable of thoroughly documenting all activities that take place in the medical sector.
Public information
I remember an incident on the East Rand in the late nineties when a private waste management company (who shall remain nameless) decided to move a truckload of 210 litre drums containing all sorts of highly toxic chemical waste early one morning before rush hour. It all proceeded according to plan until their luck ran out and 12 drums ended up in various states of disrepair all over the N12 freeway. The fire department hazmat response was quick and efficient but unfortunately the rush hour had already started and upon arrival a large number of cars had already gone through the scene. The incident was quickly reported to the media and very soon and it wasn’t long before emergency services were confronted with questions from the public regarding chemical exposure and possible health effects.
A combined information service was subsequently set up between both the fire service involved and the waste company, which provided information and advice to the public and managed to control and dispel many of the rumours that were beginning to circulate at the time.
The critical lesson here was that the people providing the information were able to establish confidence within the public due to their knowledge of the risk and experience in dealing with the incident. When dealing with a highly technical incident, it is important to realise that this cannot always be accomplished by the department’s public information officer, since he/she may not be familiar with how to describe a chemical’s health effects in a manner that does not create unnecessary panic. The person who responds to the public concerns question needs to have the facts and the ability to communicate in an informed and compassionate manner.
Product control: tips and tricks
Hazardous materials spillages will occur in all sorts of places and in many varied ways. Most of the time you won’t need any space-age equipment to deal with them and if you are part of the first-in engine company, you won’t have any space-age equipment. Think about how you would emergency-plug a fuel leak on an external fuel tank while touring Africa in your 4x4. That should get you on the road to thinking about this problem.
It would be good to carry a few golf tees on you for plugging that small leak or pipe that can’t be crimped. You should also consider including a small diameter rope and some patches with a measure of chemical resistance. Leaks in piping often occur at pipe junctions, bends, and other locations where conventional pipe sleeves will not work. A patch can be applied over the leak and the small-diameter rope lashed over the patch to stop the leak. Remember, you only need to stop the leak temporarily. After this it becomes the hazmat team with its entire custom made leak sealing kits or the private hazmat contractor’s problem.
A visit to your local hardware mart or plumbers supply shop will provide you with a myriad of ideas for low cost but effective materials that can be used to plug leaks in many different positions.
Another control technique that should be considered is that of auto-refrigeration, which can be used specifically to deal with a small liquid petroleum gas leak. By covering the leak with a length of mutton cloth and applying water to the affected area. As the pressure around the hole lowers so does the temperature. The lowering of the temperature will freeze the mutton cloth, and thereby temporarily stop the leak.
The level of training of the responders will cause a problem to many services who have a limited training budget and do not have many people trained to ‘hazmat technician’ level on their staff establishment. There are many examples of responders only trained up to ‘operations’ level getting involved in technician level activities and injuring themselves. This level of training is non-negotiable and must be a high priority with all fire services who respond to hazardous materials incidents. A programme of ensuring that sufficient technicians are available on shift daily and a medium to long term capacity building programme should be in place at these services.
Finally
The old adage ‘knowledge is power’ is nowhere in emergency response more true than at a hazardous materials incident. A strong command with access to all the information relevant to the product involved and its hazards is the key to a successful response.
Emergency services must ensure that their most vital asset, their staff, are adequately trained and protected to work safely and come home healthy.
And most important, don’t send an operations guy to do a technicians job.
Photo 1: A strong command with access to all the information relevant to the product involved and its hazards is the key to a successful response
Photo 2: It is always a big decision to close a freeway or major route but if necessary, the decision must be taken
Photo 3: Consider including a small diameter rope and some patches with a measure of chemical resistance
Photo 4: Hazardous materials spillages will occur in all sorts of places and in many varied ways
Photo 5: It must be ensured that when a decision is made that an area is out of bounds, measures are put in place to positively ensure that NO ONE enters the area
Commanding a hazardous materials emergency – some random thoughts
By Colin Deiner, chief director, Disaster management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Government
In a previous article I dealt with the steps needed to be followed in establishing a hazmat team in a fire service. In this article, it is assumed that your department already has a hazmat capability and is called upon to respond to incidents involving hazardous materials.
This is not a concise standard operating procedure for hazmat response (there are enough text books on this). What I hope you will get out of this article is some extra food for thought about how you manage your hazardous materials responses and hopefully some ideas on improving on it.
Initial response
The time honoured phrase ‘every incident is a hazmat incident until proved otherwise’ is true and should always be uppermost in the minds of responders. This, to an extent, leads me to my next thought, which is that the vast majority of hazmat incidents that you will respond to will not require you to have a minimum of twelve crew members, entry teams dressed up in level A, fully encapsulated, gas-tight personal protective equipment (PPE) and establish a 15-stage decontamination line prior to making that first entry.
By understanding the product and its properties, you will be able to make a quick assessment of the risk involved and be able to formulate an action plan in a relatively short space of time.
How do you do this?
Firstly, try to determine state of the product involved ie solid, liquid or vapour. Obviously, a vapour or volatile liquids would constitute the highest risk. Is it a pressure or non-pressure vessel? Do you detect any vapours around the container?
If you receive a call from the product owner or company transporting it, you should be able to determine its identity and properties quite easily. You can also identify the product by its container shape or label. If you have no information and are not are sure of what material is involved, try to identify the above facts from a safe distance. How many fire services still have a good pair of binoculars on their first response vehicles and Hazmat units for this purpose?
We unfortunately have to contend with the many other services who respond to accidents involving hazardous materials on our roads and who have a) no hazmat training; b) no PPE; c) no idea (in many cases). This does making parking a safe distance away and trying to identify the product while five other services are already on top of the scene seem a bit foolish. As I have mentioned many times before, it is up to us as hazmat first responders to make contact with our brothers and sisters in other services and agencies and plan our responses to these incidents properly. With the kind of communication devices available to us today, we should be able to convey the message of a possible hazardous materials presence at an accident scene to all responders quite easily. I’m sure the D-Day Normandy invasion would never have worked if the Germans had Twitter! If you have gone the extra mile and worked through some hazardous materials awareness training with the local police, EMS, vehicle recovery and roads maintenance people, they should all respect the system and also stage themselves in a safe area until the ‘all clear’ is given.
It is always a big decision to close a freeway or major route but if necessary, the decision must be taken. As the knowledgeable person on scene, the incident commander should use his/her legislative mandate to deny entry for as long as it is necessary and should have the courage of his/her convictions to stay with the decision. Remember that an inconvenience is temporary. Death is forever.
Other important clues as to the properties of the materials involved and to better clarify the hazards involved will include container marking, placards, labels, shipping papers and material safety data sheets (MSDSs).
Ultimately, the best source of information on the product will be the manufacturer. Responsible manufacturers generally have an all-hours helpline that will provide extensive information on the product, its properties and reactivity under certain conditions and how to manage it once it has been released from its container. Unfortunately, you will find that in many instances the number provided for emergency assistance may be useless if the incident happens after office hours, which it inevitably does. It is for this reason that you have all the other options available to you. Chemical databases are either commercially available or can be downloaded as open source software on the internet such as the ‘Wiser’ chemical hazard information system. The ones that cost you money will obviously be more specific and provide you with more details and will definitely be worth the investment.
The key here is to gather all the information you, as incident commander, would need to allow you to commit responders to the incident. The first entry team can then confirm or adjust the information when they enter.
Reconnaissance
The product involved in the incident will dictate the level of protection to be utilised. Considering that the first team to enter the incident site will be a reconnaissance team and will not be utilised to do positive intervention work in the hot zone, it may not be necessary for them to have the highest level of protection at this stage. During the initial recon, the focus should primarily be on respiratory protection and the team should at the very least have adequate protection in this area.
Your standard turn-out gear should be adequate if you are dealing with a flammable, explosive or reactive substance. If it is a toxic material, your level of protection should be a level A gas-tight suit. Fortunately, not many products are flammable and toxic however, when you do get to the incident where you might be dealing with such a substance, you need to be sure you have the correct protection.
Your recon team should primarily be allocated the following tasks:
• Further identification/confirmation of the product involved;
• Risk evaluation;
• Rescue needs determination;
• Product control measures to be implemented and
• Identification of safe zones and evacuation routes.
In order to achieve all of this, the recon team should have the necessary monitoring equipment. This should include pH paper, a four gas detector, photo ionisation device, temperature measuring detector and if radiation risks are anticipated, a radiological meter. By having a good understanding of the purpose of each one of these devices and taking careful note of the environment into which you are moving, you will be able to make an accurate investigation of what products are involved and what level of protection would be required to deal with them.
Entering an area assumed to be flammable, explosive or reactive, you might consider your standard bunker gear to be sufficient. By using the pH paper on any encountered liquids you can ascertain whether it is corrosive. This could badly damage your bunker gear and cause severe injuries. Your recon team should withdraw from that point immediately.
Remember to always have enough chemical tape at hand when using bunker gear for hazmat response. By taping up the space between your gloves and sleeves and also the front of your bunker jacket you are immediately providing extra protection to your teams entering the incident site.
The array of detection equipment carried by the recon team should provide sufficient clues as to the presence of organic vapours, radiation, exothermic reactivity and flammability. Any warnings provided by any of the equipment during the recon phase should signal an immediate withdrawal to a safe zone. If this does not happen, the recon team should take careful note of the readings at each identified point and report them as they go along. Upon returning to the cold zone the recon team should make as detailed report as possible to the incident commander on all their findings including the labelling on any containers, shapes of containers etc.
Whereas in the past, hazmat responders have always responded with a ‘worst case scenario’ in mind, we know that this is in most services no longer possible. Services today do no longer have the budgets to equip and maintain multiple hazmat units strategically placed in their operational areas. In many cases nowadays, services tend to identify which first due pumpers would most likely respond to hazmat incidents and then equip these units with a limited amount of product control materials and some (usually level B) chemical protection. We do however, have to understand that we need highly trained individuals to man these vehicles and that their input in the recon phase of a hazardous materials incident could mean the difference between a relatively minor incident and a potential disaster.
Finally: your recon team cannot work in isolation. At the very least you need to ensure that before the recon team enters the incident site that you at least have an incident commander and safety officer present and one hose line deployed to act as an emergency decon team and double as a rescue back-up for the recon team. As the incident command system escalates and more units arrive, the required positions must be filled and all sectors, which will include safety, operations, decon, medical, information etc, must be established.
A word on personal protection
As mentioned above, you will only have to deploy full level A protection in only a small minority of incidents. If the day comes when you have to do so, you must understand that there are no shortcuts.
I have often walked through fire stations housing hazmat units and upon taking a look at the PPE available been interested to note that although the unit has a fair amount of level A suits, there is little other to support this garment, except maybe a hard hat and standard breathing apparatus.
Firstly, when a hazmat technician starts kitting up to enter a scene, he/she will need to have adequate breathing air to support the time spent waiting to enter the hot zone after the suit has been zipped up and sealed off with chemical tape, time spent entering and working in the hot zone and then finally time spent exiting the hot zone and going through the decon procedure. The standard open-circuit, structural breathing apparatus is not going to do it, considering your maximum working time is approximately 20 minutes. For this you need to consider an airline system or longer duration breathing apparatus cylinder. An airline system is restricted by its length; the actual airline could present a snag hazard and you will need to run in excess of six lines to support all your entry teams. It is, however, the best source for continuous air throughout the incident. The composite-construction breathing apparatus cylinder will give you a longer working time but is also limited if your team is compromised through time in any way while in the hot zone. The solution: an airline for provision of primary air with a breathing apparatus to be used as a back-up.
There are also many recent innovations such as the rapid fill devices available from some suppliers that enable the wearer to quickly hook up to an air source and replenish his/her supply. The problem here is that if that supply is at a staging area and you are in the hot zone, you will need to go through a decon procedure first before being able to access the source.
In many parts of South Africa temperatures could go up to the mid-to-high thirties (and even higher) on a summers day. Wearing a gas-tight level A suit in this temperature will rapidly fatigue the wearer and cause him/her to possibly lose consciousness. Various types of cooling vests consisting of ice packs fitted into an undergarment are available. These will provide adequate protection although the ice will melt after a while. The time should however, be sufficient for the wearer to achieve his/her objectives.
Talking of hot days. Make sure you have enough cotton under gloves available for wearers to put on under their suit gloves to ensure that their hands are kept dry at all times. The weakest part of the level A suit are in two places: the seams and the gloves. A durable chemical resistant ‘overglove’ will be needed to be placed over the suit glove to protect against any mechanical damage.
All of the above makes for a very hot, very stressed fire fighter who should be well trained to work in this environment and become used to seemingly trivial things such as managing their airline, working with three layers of gloves on their hands etc.
A clever idea would be for suit wearers to stick a few strips of duct tape or chemical tape to their suits somewhere around their sleeves or another place that is easily accessible. Should you have to pick anything up that has been dropped and will pose a problem while you are wearing three gloves, simply pull one of the strips off your suit, stick it to the tool you need to pick up and voila.
My final thought on chemical protection: if an incident requires the use of level A protection, it is important that your rescue team and decon team is also wearing level A protection. You can’t have them set up in a safe space adequately distant from the hot zone in turn-out gear only to have people in contaminated suits bring the methyl-ethyl bad stuff to them.
Incident command
As with fire attack the most important initial decision the incident commander will have to make is whether to go defensive or offensive. Deciding to go offensive might be as simple as entering the hot zone and isolating a valve. You must appreciate that this simple task will carry with it a whole range of other skill sets that, if neglected and not executed properly, could lead to serious injury or death. Responders need to correctly don their PPE, manage their air supply while moving through a confined area, perform technical work in a highly restrictive garment and proceed through a multi-stage decontamination system.
When operating in offensive mode, always anticipate that it is a dynamic situation and that things could change very quickly. When dealing with an overturned truck transporting compressed gas, anticipate that damage to the pressurised container could cause a sudden rupture that could subsequently lead to an immediate and rapid release of extremely cold or extremely flammable gas that will harm everything and everyone it touches. The tension that might be created when uprighting a vehicle that has ended up on its side, could cause the necessary distortion of the tank to make it go boom. Similarly, a vehicle transporting flammable liquid needs to have its batteries isolated to ensure that no accidental movement or fire happens during product control work.
I have mentioned scene control earlier but would just like to add that it must be ensured that when a decision is made that an area is out of bounds, measures are put in place to positively ensure that NO ONE enters the area. This will mean that more must be done than taping the area off with barrier tape. Law enforcement officers might have to be placed in strategic positions to ensure this.
Some simple ideas may be very useful in dealing with minor incidents and this should be explored further (more of this later). In a major incident however, a wide range of equipment and resources might be needed that might not be readily available. The operations section must ensure that all this equipment must be available before commencement of operations and account for the safety of personnel.
Medical sector
Prior to entry into the hot zone all responders must undergo a proper medical screening. This will be made much easier if staff is on a good health and wellness programme and good records are kept on them throughout their careers.
The medical sector manager must have information relevant to the health hazards of the product involved and the required emergency care. He/she must also be capable of communicating with the chemical manufacturer, local hospital emergency room staff and representatives from the local poison control centre. Some responders may be nervous when dealing with a chemical they are encountering for the first time and must therefore be confident in this person's ability to manage patient care effectively.
The medical officer will also ensure that patients are decontaminated prior to receiving any further medical care and as always must exercise close control over all the medical people assigned to his/her sector and ensure that they don’t lose focus and zero in on a single patient. He/she must be organised, disciplined and capable of thoroughly documenting all activities that take place in the medical sector.
Public information
I remember an incident on the East Rand in the late nineties when a private waste management company (who shall remain nameless) decided to move a truckload of 210 litre drums containing all sorts of highly toxic chemical waste early one morning before rush hour. It all proceeded according to plan until their luck ran out and 12 drums ended up in various states of disrepair all over the N12 freeway. The fire department hazmat response was quick and efficient but unfortunately the rush hour had already started and upon arrival a large number of cars had already gone through the scene. The incident was quickly reported to the media and very soon and it wasn’t long before emergency services were confronted with questions from the public regarding chemical exposure and possible health effects.
A combined information service was subsequently set up between both the fire service involved and the waste company, which provided information and advice to the public and managed to control and dispel many of the rumours that were beginning to circulate at the time.
The critical lesson here was that the people providing the information were able to establish confidence within the public due to their knowledge of the risk and experience in dealing with the incident. When dealing with a highly technical incident, it is important to realise that this cannot always be accomplished by the department’s public information officer, since he/she may not be familiar with how to describe a chemical’s health effects in a manner that does not create unnecessary panic. The person who responds to the public concerns question needs to have the facts and the ability to communicate in an informed and compassionate manner.
Product control: tips and tricks
Hazardous materials spillages will occur in all sorts of places and in many varied ways. Most of the time you won’t need any space-age equipment to deal with them and if you are part of the first-in engine company, you won’t have any space-age equipment. Think about how you would emergency-plug a fuel leak on an external fuel tank while touring Africa in your 4x4. That should get you on the road to thinking about this problem.
It would be good to carry a few golf tees on you for plugging that small leak or pipe that can’t be crimped. You should also consider including a small diameter rope and some patches with a measure of chemical resistance. Leaks in piping often occur at pipe junctions, bends, and other locations where conventional pipe sleeves will not work. A patch can be applied over the leak and the small-diameter rope lashed over the patch to stop the leak. Remember, you only need to stop the leak temporarily. After this it becomes the hazmat team with its entire custom made leak sealing kits or the private hazmat contractor’s problem.
A visit to your local hardware mart or plumbers supply shop will provide you with a myriad of ideas for low cost but effective materials that can be used to plug leaks in many different positions.
Another control technique that should be considered is that of auto-refrigeration, which can be used specifically to deal with a small liquid petroleum gas leak. By covering the leak with a length of mutton cloth and applying water to the affected area. As the pressure around the hole lowers so does the temperature. The lowering of the temperature will freeze the mutton cloth, and thereby temporarily stop the leak.
The level of training of the responders will cause a problem to many services who have a limited training budget and do not have many people trained to ‘hazmat technician’ level on their staff establishment. There are many examples of responders only trained up to ‘operations’ level getting involved in technician level activities and injuring themselves. This level of training is non-negotiable and must be a high priority with all fire services who respond to hazardous materials incidents. A programme of ensuring that sufficient technicians are available on shift daily and a medium to long term capacity building programme should be in place at these services.
Finally
The old adage ‘knowledge is power’ is nowhere in emergency response more true than at a hazardous materials incident. A strong command with access to all the information relevant to the product involved and its hazards is the key to a successful response.
Emergency services must ensure that their most vital asset, their staff, are adequately trained and protected to work safely and come home healthy.
And most important, don’t send an operations guy to do a technicians job.
Photo 1: A strong command with access to all the information relevant to the product involved and its hazards is the key to a successful response
Photo 2: It is always a big decision to close a freeway or major route but if necessary, the decision must be taken
Photo 3: Consider including a small diameter rope and some patches with a measure of chemical resistance
Photo 4: Hazardous materials spillages will occur in all sorts of places and in many varied ways
Photo 5: It must be ensured that when a decision is made that an area is out of bounds, measures are put in place to positively ensure that NO ONE enters the area
