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20 October 2023
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Featured FRI Magazine article: Setting up a hazardous materials response team – what you need written by Colin Deiner (FRI Vol 1 no 7)
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https://www.frimedia.org/uploads/1/2/2/7/122743954/rfi_vol1no7_final_lr.pdf
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Setting up a hazardous materials response team – what you need written by Colin Deiner (FRI Vol 1 no 7). 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.
Setting up a hazardous materials response team –what you need (FRI Vol 1 no 7)
By Colin Deiner, Chief Director, Disaster management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Provincial Government
“Every incident you respond to is a hazmat incident until it is conclusively proved that no hazardous materials are present” – this phrase has been used by hazmat instructors for as long as I can remember and is probably more relevant today than the first time it was said.
The rapid industrialisation taking place all over the world has exponentially increased the presence of hazardous materials in locations close to human settlements. It has unfortunately also led to an increase in hazardous waste and the illegal disposal thereof. The cut-back environment in which emergency services are expected to operate has increased the challenge in mainly two areas: the first being the fact that very few fire departments in this country are able to employ specialist hazmat units (more of that later) and the second being the lack of capacity to enforce environmental laws to its fullest extent.
As the cities we live in evolve and become more hi-tech, so will its reliance on the use of chemicals. These chemicals get used in a wide spectrum of processes, almost too much for us to comprehend. The logical expectation from public is that they will be stored and handled responsibly and when they are disposed of it will be in a safe manner using excepted methods. The biggest problem with this perception is that we don’t realise that all this compliance carries with it a hefty price tag and for many unscrupulous operators it is far easier (and cheaper) to just dispose of the chemicals on some trash heap or into some water source close by. This irresponsible behaviour is on the increase and really comes back to haunt us when homeless people start scouring these heaps for food, people use the water for consumption or some unfortunate fire fighter responds to a trash fire saturated with some evil chemical which will either kill him immediately or destroy his health permanently.
The most common hazmat response in this country must be to transportation accidents. This is not specifically due to the fact that they occur more frequently than incidents at fixed sites but more because of the fact that they are not that easy to hide. A truck landing on its side on the N1 is a fairly newsworthy event. Although the regulation of hazardous materials road transport is a lot easier and generally better implemented, the response in many cases leaves a lot to be desired.
Due to the large areas of this country not adequately covered by fire services, most responses to accidents are done by the regional or provincial ambulance service in the territory. This is sometimes supported by a private emergency medical service or ambulances situated at power stations or mines through some mutual assistance agreement (if they are in the area). How often don’t we see news coverage of some unfortunate individual being extricated from the wreck of a heavy cargo truck on some rural road by emergency responders dressed in short sleeve flight suits or work uniforms with white shirts, while a “skull and crossbones” sticker lurks ominously on the tank container in the background. In fact, I’ve seen it happen in many cities as well!
The most important thing these rescuers should have done (and we hope they did), is to identify the cargo involved. It is from here where all future decisions should flow.
Some history
The origin of hazardous materials response can be traced back to the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the 1940's. The FDNY deployed a "Fire Gas and Chemistry Lab" which used a delivery van of the day. It was only operational for a few short years. There is a bit of uncertainty as to who was next in line to set up a “chemical response unit”, but it seems that it did happen in Chicago when a fire fighter called Ted Latis started a company level response to flammable liquid fires after a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion) involving a rail tank car on the south west side of the city. There is also evidence of the first heavy rescue truck to be deployed in 1941 in the Cincinnati Fire Department responding to all hazmat incidents in their city. In terms of what we call a "hazmat team" today, I think you can call Jacksonville, FL the "first hazmat team in the US". It was organised by Captain Ron Gore. The Houston hazmat team followed shortly after, going in service in September 1979.
Following Jacksonville and Houston, several departments on the east and west coast developed teams as well as Chicago. Most of those teams came on board in the early to mid 80's. The gradual development and evolution of hazmat teams received a major boost from the US Government in 2002 following the perceived threat of “weapons of mass destruction” which gripped the world after the 911 attacks in New York and Washington DC.
In South Africa, most of the big city fire services employed the services of “hazchem” vehicles, which were generally staffed on an ad hoc basis by fire fighters also booked on other appliances during their shift period. The exposure enjoyed by South African fire fighters to international practices post 1994 was a major factor in the development of local hazmat response strategies and techniques. The first technician level, hazmat training course was conducted at the then Boksburg Fire Department in the mid-eighties. The South African petro-chemical industry has also been a leading catalyst in establishing emergency response to hazardous materials training. The partnerships established by the Southern African Emergency Services Institute (SAESI) with the Oklahoma State University and the International Fire Services Accreditation Committee in the mid-nineties, enabled local fire fighters to follow a qualification path from awareness to technician level. Today it is a requirement of all fire fighters to achieve the awareness and operations level while many services employ a number of hazmat technicians to deal with the technical aspects of their hazmat responses.
Do you need a hazmat team?
Like all special operations hazmat teams are expensive and personnel intensive. The need for any city to have a hazmat team should be an imperative and not even be debated. Realistically however, we are forced to operate in a cut-back environment which limits our human resources to the many routine “in-your-face” incidents we have to deal with and the money provided for equipment generally focuses on the more vital equipment such as fire hose, breathing apparatus and PPE. So how do you make the decision?
Risk assessment
The first thing you need to do is to develop a realistic picture of the potential for a hazardous materials incident to occur in your community. A hazards analysis will help you to identify the facilities that manufacture, store and/or use hazardous materials; the specific hazardous properties of the materials as well as how the materials are utilised and stored. You should also be able to ascertain which safety and control measures are in place in these facilities which will be able to assist you in dealing with a possible incident.
Together with the fixed facilities it is also necessary to identify transportation corridors eg highways, waterways, air, and pipelines, through which hazardous materials are transported.
Once you have this picture you need to do an estimation of the human population, public buildings and systems, and environmental features that would be affected (including the extent of the effect), in the event of an incident.
Finally an investigation should be done of the frequency and scope of past incidents, which should assist you in estimating the likelihood of any future incidents and the severity of any consequences to human beings and the environment.
You need a system
After completing the analysis you should have a reasonable picture of the hazardous materials present in your community as well as the risk it poses to life and health. You will then have to address the following two questions:
The simple approach could be to rely on the many private chemical response operators that have been established in recent years. This approach does have many advantages: firstly, this is their primary activity and they generally employ highly skilled technicians with good and current equipment. Secondly, they take responsibility for recovering the costs of the clean-up operation which could be a nightmare if left to your own bean counters. If this approach is to be followed, it is extremely important to develop watertight agreements which defines clear responsibilities and functions and ensures that these operators are able to work within the hazardous materials incident management system which must be in place. Where I would have suffered a minor cardiac incident some years back if anyone even thought of recommending this approach to me, I think we should realise that with the huge budget constraints we currently face many smaller services have no choice but to go down this road. The main concern I have here however, is that the responsibility to deal with the risks of hazardous materials still rests with formal fire and rescue services and this is a responsibility we cannot delegate. A further concern relates to the emergency intervention phase of a hazmat incident for which private operators are not normally geared for.
The second and more involved approach would be to establish a formal response system which includes all possible stake holders. These include the fire service, police, traffic services, roads department, hospitals and emergency medical services, the media, public works personnel, contractors and environmental authorities. The bottom line is that your hazmat team is one component of a greater system including all these role players. Only when your response system is fully planned, trained and operational, will you develop a more accurate picture of whether you need a hazmat team and what its role would be.
The formal hazmat team
The first consideration relates to training. Hazmat training in South Africa is derived from the United States “National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Standard 472, Professional Competence of Responders to Hazardous Material Incidents”. Within this standard there are five generally accepted levels to which hazardous materials responders should be trained:
First responder awareness level
This level of training applies to persons: (1) who are likely to witness or discover a hazardous materials release and (2) who have received prior training in initiating an emergency response sequence by notifying the proper authorities.
This is the first step in hazmat training and should not only be presented to trainee fire fighters, but also to any other first responder who may in the course of their duties encounter a possible hazardous materials incident. People who have completed this level will be able to recognise a hazardous materials event and activate the necessary resources needed to deal with the incident.
First responder operations level
Individuals at this level form part of the initial response group at the site of an actual or potential hazardous materials incident. They protect persons, property, and/or the environment at risk from the effects of the release. They will respond in a purely defensive manner. Their primary function is not to stop the release but to contain it, if possible, from a safe distance, while preventing additional exposures.
All fire department members should be trained to this level before the next step in the development of the team is taken.
Hazardous materials technician
This is the primary technical intervention phase to which every member of the hazmat team must be trained. Technicians are responsible for spill control and plugging and patching the source of the release. We must at this point also appreciate that activities at this level might not only be limited to product control. What if we have a hazardous cargo truck driver trapped in the cab of a vehicle spewing some evil form of liquid death who needs to be extricated from his predicament? As if that isn’t enough I remember an incident in 2001 on the East Rand, when technicians had to remove one ton contaminated acid containers using forklifts. All this while wearing level A suits!
Hazardous materials specialist
This highly specialised level has not yet been fully implemented in South Africa and is designed to respond with and provide support to hazmat technicians. Their duties require a more directed or specific knowledge of the various substances involved in the incident. People at this level have training equal to the technician level but specialise in specified areas. Areas that come to mind here are explosives, petro-chemicals, poisons etc.
Hazardous materials incident commander
This is the person responsible for the management of the entire operation. In addition to his/her knowledge of hazardous materials, he/she should also be familiar with the department’s incident command system, any unified command structures and the roles and responsibilities of other agencies involved. Incident command systems relying on the use of private contractors to carry out the technician level activities, must ensure that any agreements reflect exactly what is required from all parties as well as defining the boundaries in which they should operate.
Once the above structures are identified and people are trained in sufficient numbers to the desired levels the basis of a hazmat team is formed.
Equipment
In all probability the most expensive component will be the acquisition and maintenance of the equipment required to furnish the team. If you can afford the luxury of a custom-built hazmat unit you should not have much trouble in equipping it. In most cases however, this might not be possible and you might want to consider refurbishing an old fire truck (just throw off the body, tank and pump and slap a whole lot of compartments onto it) or finding a similar vehicle with reasonably good carrying capacity, which can be transformed into a hazmat unit. A fundamental mistake I have seen on some hazmat units is the tendency to build an “integrated” unit which includes the equipment storage, command post and decontamination area all together. This is totally undesirable for a number of reasons. The first (and most important) being the fact that you might compromise your entire equipment cache and command staff by moving them into a position too close to the red zone in an effort to utilise the decon chamber. Noise from recharging breathing apparatus would also make any command functions difficult to perform. In various cases services have made use of maritime containers to house the various modules such as command, equipment stores and decon and by means of a prime mover and crane been able to strategically site them to the greatest advantage. The downside here is most probably going to be the limitations of having one prime mover for three (or more) pods.
The next big cost item will be the personal protective equipment (PPE). Here again the level of hazmat response will dictate the type of PPE required and the cost thereof. The main objective here is maximum respiratory and dermal protection when: (1) entering atmospheres containing unknown substances; or (2) entering atmospheres containing known substances in unknown concentrations. If your approach will be largely defensive, you will probably be able to get away with a good level B protection programme (maximum respiratory protection utilising self-contained breathing apparatus [SCBA] and a lesser degree of dermal protection). You will obviously have to think very carefully about this because we know that the incident will almost always dictate what level of protection we need. Level A (maximum respiratory protection by utilising SCBA and maximum dermal protection from a totally encapsulating chemical suit) is a necessity when working in a situation where your technicians will come into direct contact with the product. Generally though, the majority of your responses will only require level B protection.
Two vital things to keep in mind: (1) there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Chemical suits do not offer protection against all chemicals. A lot of work has been done in recent years to manufacture a fairly good general use type of suit, but even then it will not provide comprehensive protection under all conditions. Most manufacturers provide what is called a “suit compatibility chart” with their product. Nowadays it takes the form of a DVD and will give you information on the compatibility of the suit to a particular chemical as well as the “safe working time” to which the garment can be exposed to the chemical. The best practice here would be to look at the risk and acquire a small selection of suits which can be used for specific incidents. (2) Chemical suits cannot survive on its own. The suit is only one component of an entire ensemble which consists of boots, over-boots, under-gloves, over-gloves, hardhats, personal alarms, communications systems and breathing apparatus. This is then all taped up with a purpose made chemical resistant sealing tape. A comprehensive procedure for donning chemical PPE must form part of your team’s standard operating procedures (SOP) and must be strictly monitored. Any damage to the suits and it must be replaced. In many cases it would be ok to decontaminate the suits after an incident and put them back into service. This needs to be carefully controlled and no unnecessary chances should be taken.
Many hazmat teams I know of tend to make use of standard 300bar breathing apparatus which generally provide the wearer with an effective 20 minutes of work time. When you consider that the technician needs to enter the hot zone from a safe area, perform his/her work, exit the zone and go through a decon process you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that this is totally impractical. Two solutions exist: (1) airline systems (2) long duration breathing apparatus. I would recommend the composite 90 minute duration SCBAs due to the fact that it sits inside the suit and does not, like the airline system, create an “imperfection” where it enters the suit. Airline systems also limit the distance of operation and can cause snag hazards when moving in and around piping etc. The composite cylinder SCBA is usually of aluminium construction and has a form of carbon-fibre wrap and provides a number of advantages specifically in terms of its weight and obvious duration. The main consideration when selections are made must be around the time it will take from when the suit is donned by the wearer and sealed off. The wearer may have to wait for a while in his/her suit before entering the hot zone and then walk quite a distance to the worksite. Once the job is completed he/she has to return to the decontamination site, go through the decon process before removing his/her suit. Also consider that the wearer might be working in hot weather under extremely stressful conditions which might have an adverse effect on oxygen use.
One of the main indicators for suit selection will be the properties of chemical involved. It is here where correct and accurate monitoring plays its role. It would be prohibitively expensive to purchase all needed monitoring equipment and it is for this reason that we need to go back to our initial risk assessment and try to find some sort of compromised solution. I use the word “compromise” advisedly because this is the one area where this decision can come back to haunt you.
The first approach must be to acquire a “multi-gas” detector which provides you with information on a wide spectrum of gasses. The biggest limitation of many of these detectors is that the detector needs to know what it is looking for. In other words: you have to have prior knowledge of the possible released gas and then set the detector up to monitor the atmosphere for it. Many services will generally make use of a confined space alarm system which will at least provide data on oxygen quality, flammability and carbon monoxide levels.
For a technician level hazmat team the following classes of monitoring kit should be available:
The possible risk to which your team may respond, could dictate that other gas specific detectors, pH paper and flame ionisation and photo-ionisation detectors be included in their arsenal.
Once the team is kitted out and knows what product they are dealing with they will have to enter the hot zone and try to control the released chemical. The equipment required for these tasks will range from non-sparking tools to over drums and will be once again dictated by the specific risks that could be presented. In many cases a bit of imagination would save you a lot of money. Buying a state-of-the-art, pneumatic leak sealing bag might look very good but could become a very expensive donation when it gets badly damaged by an aggressive chemical on which it was used. A wide range of industrial plugging and patching devises do exist, which can also be used in hazardous materials emergencies. The first prize would obviously be to equip the team with purpose-made, chemically resistant plugging and patching kit. Understanding, however, that the “chemically resistant” part of it could be subjective.
Finally, if you need specialised equipment such as intrinsically safe radios and lighting you will need to acquire it.
Information systems
It is very surprising to find out how few emergency services actually do have an up-to-date chemical information system. Very few fire services and even less ambulance services have access to even the most basic chemical information and most responders normally rely on emergency response guidebooks, which although valuable, cannot provide comprehensive information on the properties of the product, the emergency response procedures, patient treatment protocols, definitive medical care and rehabilitation of the contaminated area. A number of products capable of providing this information are commercially available and can be fashioned to cater for a specific risk profile. A good solution here would be to access a number of open-source applications such as the “Wiser” chemical hazard information system. This will need some planning and a bit of training for your communications people but will assist your information and planning officer and incident commander with a roadmap for the management of the incident.
Decontamination
Probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of hazmat response is decontamination. I have seen many state-of-the-art decon units being commissioned by fire services with impressive looking showers and changing facilities but with no capacity to deal with the run-off of the decontamination process. Equally, when I have seen some sort of run-off management capacity there has been virtually no method of disposing the contaminated water safely. Once water from a wet decon process has made contact with the contaminated suit and equipment, it is also contaminated and needs to be disposed of correctly. It is a fact that many products can be diluted (and thereby neutralised) by means on copious amounts of water and may not require further disposal of the decon water. We will almost always have to contain the decon run-off and dispose of it in an acceptable manner, usually at an approved facility.
As with all equipment the nature of the product to which the team is exposed will dictate the type of decontamination required.
Wet decontamination is most commonly used to decontaminate personnel, tools, and large equipment. For this water, hoses, brushes, buckets, cleaning agents, tarps, pools, pumps, and tanks to hold the contaminated water, are needed. Plastic chairs are also helpful for responders who need to take off PPE. Durable disposal bags should also be provided for bagging items that will not be reused and need to be disposed of, such as inner gloves, disposable under-suits, tape, etc.
Dry decontamination will normally be used in situations where the product involved will have a negative reaction to water and usually involves bagging everything that comes out of the hot zone. This process could require brushes to remove gross contamination and bags to collect all affected materials.
The majority of equipment needed for decontamination is disposable products that need not be bought at high cost. It must be stressed however that durable, leak resistant bags, tarps and pools that can handle a fair amount of abuse, should be provided.
When planning your decontamination procedure remember that the decon team must be provided with the same level of protection as the entry team. When an entry team has come into physical contact with a hazardous chemical and leaves the hot zone it is effectively bringing that product with it to the decon area, thereby potentially contaminating people in that area. I have often seen decon teams clad only in level B protection (or fire fighting gear) whilst decontaminating responders in level A suits.
How big should my team be?
The minimum size for the hazmat team is six people. This is made up of two entry team members, a two-man back-up team who will relieve the entry team to complete unfinished work or act as a rescue team and a two-man decon team. This is of course assuming that all other activities on scene such as water supply, incident command, scene safety, medical screening have been taken care of.
Here again the importance of a well thought out system comes to the fore. A quick arrangement of rotating your six members eg entry team is replaced by back-up team in hot zone…decon team becomes back-up team…and entry team does a quick turnaround to assume the decon role, will provide you with an effective “force multiplier”, which might just get you through the day without too many headaches.
Conclusion
In this article I have focussed on what is needed to establish a hazmat team. I have deliberately kept away from operational issues and will focus on that in future articles. The most important message I can leave with you is the old adage of “knowledge is power”. There is no way that any fire service can deal with all possible hazmat incidents. It would just be too impractical and too expensive. By establishing a good response to the types of incidents you are likely to encounter and by developing escalation plans to deal with a major incident, which might require possible national resources (and testing those plans) you should be able to respond to this very technical challenge. A hazmat incident commander must be able to (more than anything else) think on his/her feet and think big.
I am hoping that this article motivates you to just go back and have another look at how your team is structured and if they will be able to survive the next “liquid death” release they will have to respond to.
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Setting up a hazardous materials response team – what you need written by Colin Deiner (FRI Vol 1 no 7). 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.
Setting up a hazardous materials response team –what you need (FRI Vol 1 no 7)
By Colin Deiner, Chief Director, Disaster management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Provincial Government
“Every incident you respond to is a hazmat incident until it is conclusively proved that no hazardous materials are present” – this phrase has been used by hazmat instructors for as long as I can remember and is probably more relevant today than the first time it was said.
The rapid industrialisation taking place all over the world has exponentially increased the presence of hazardous materials in locations close to human settlements. It has unfortunately also led to an increase in hazardous waste and the illegal disposal thereof. The cut-back environment in which emergency services are expected to operate has increased the challenge in mainly two areas: the first being the fact that very few fire departments in this country are able to employ specialist hazmat units (more of that later) and the second being the lack of capacity to enforce environmental laws to its fullest extent.
As the cities we live in evolve and become more hi-tech, so will its reliance on the use of chemicals. These chemicals get used in a wide spectrum of processes, almost too much for us to comprehend. The logical expectation from public is that they will be stored and handled responsibly and when they are disposed of it will be in a safe manner using excepted methods. The biggest problem with this perception is that we don’t realise that all this compliance carries with it a hefty price tag and for many unscrupulous operators it is far easier (and cheaper) to just dispose of the chemicals on some trash heap or into some water source close by. This irresponsible behaviour is on the increase and really comes back to haunt us when homeless people start scouring these heaps for food, people use the water for consumption or some unfortunate fire fighter responds to a trash fire saturated with some evil chemical which will either kill him immediately or destroy his health permanently.
The most common hazmat response in this country must be to transportation accidents. This is not specifically due to the fact that they occur more frequently than incidents at fixed sites but more because of the fact that they are not that easy to hide. A truck landing on its side on the N1 is a fairly newsworthy event. Although the regulation of hazardous materials road transport is a lot easier and generally better implemented, the response in many cases leaves a lot to be desired.
Due to the large areas of this country not adequately covered by fire services, most responses to accidents are done by the regional or provincial ambulance service in the territory. This is sometimes supported by a private emergency medical service or ambulances situated at power stations or mines through some mutual assistance agreement (if they are in the area). How often don’t we see news coverage of some unfortunate individual being extricated from the wreck of a heavy cargo truck on some rural road by emergency responders dressed in short sleeve flight suits or work uniforms with white shirts, while a “skull and crossbones” sticker lurks ominously on the tank container in the background. In fact, I’ve seen it happen in many cities as well!
The most important thing these rescuers should have done (and we hope they did), is to identify the cargo involved. It is from here where all future decisions should flow.
Some history
The origin of hazardous materials response can be traced back to the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the 1940's. The FDNY deployed a "Fire Gas and Chemistry Lab" which used a delivery van of the day. It was only operational for a few short years. There is a bit of uncertainty as to who was next in line to set up a “chemical response unit”, but it seems that it did happen in Chicago when a fire fighter called Ted Latis started a company level response to flammable liquid fires after a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion) involving a rail tank car on the south west side of the city. There is also evidence of the first heavy rescue truck to be deployed in 1941 in the Cincinnati Fire Department responding to all hazmat incidents in their city. In terms of what we call a "hazmat team" today, I think you can call Jacksonville, FL the "first hazmat team in the US". It was organised by Captain Ron Gore. The Houston hazmat team followed shortly after, going in service in September 1979.
Following Jacksonville and Houston, several departments on the east and west coast developed teams as well as Chicago. Most of those teams came on board in the early to mid 80's. The gradual development and evolution of hazmat teams received a major boost from the US Government in 2002 following the perceived threat of “weapons of mass destruction” which gripped the world after the 911 attacks in New York and Washington DC.
In South Africa, most of the big city fire services employed the services of “hazchem” vehicles, which were generally staffed on an ad hoc basis by fire fighters also booked on other appliances during their shift period. The exposure enjoyed by South African fire fighters to international practices post 1994 was a major factor in the development of local hazmat response strategies and techniques. The first technician level, hazmat training course was conducted at the then Boksburg Fire Department in the mid-eighties. The South African petro-chemical industry has also been a leading catalyst in establishing emergency response to hazardous materials training. The partnerships established by the Southern African Emergency Services Institute (SAESI) with the Oklahoma State University and the International Fire Services Accreditation Committee in the mid-nineties, enabled local fire fighters to follow a qualification path from awareness to technician level. Today it is a requirement of all fire fighters to achieve the awareness and operations level while many services employ a number of hazmat technicians to deal with the technical aspects of their hazmat responses.
Do you need a hazmat team?
Like all special operations hazmat teams are expensive and personnel intensive. The need for any city to have a hazmat team should be an imperative and not even be debated. Realistically however, we are forced to operate in a cut-back environment which limits our human resources to the many routine “in-your-face” incidents we have to deal with and the money provided for equipment generally focuses on the more vital equipment such as fire hose, breathing apparatus and PPE. So how do you make the decision?
Risk assessment
The first thing you need to do is to develop a realistic picture of the potential for a hazardous materials incident to occur in your community. A hazards analysis will help you to identify the facilities that manufacture, store and/or use hazardous materials; the specific hazardous properties of the materials as well as how the materials are utilised and stored. You should also be able to ascertain which safety and control measures are in place in these facilities which will be able to assist you in dealing with a possible incident.
Together with the fixed facilities it is also necessary to identify transportation corridors eg highways, waterways, air, and pipelines, through which hazardous materials are transported.
Once you have this picture you need to do an estimation of the human population, public buildings and systems, and environmental features that would be affected (including the extent of the effect), in the event of an incident.
Finally an investigation should be done of the frequency and scope of past incidents, which should assist you in estimating the likelihood of any future incidents and the severity of any consequences to human beings and the environment.
You need a system
After completing the analysis you should have a reasonable picture of the hazardous materials present in your community as well as the risk it poses to life and health. You will then have to address the following two questions:
- Do we need a hazmat team?
- What level of team should we operate at?
The simple approach could be to rely on the many private chemical response operators that have been established in recent years. This approach does have many advantages: firstly, this is their primary activity and they generally employ highly skilled technicians with good and current equipment. Secondly, they take responsibility for recovering the costs of the clean-up operation which could be a nightmare if left to your own bean counters. If this approach is to be followed, it is extremely important to develop watertight agreements which defines clear responsibilities and functions and ensures that these operators are able to work within the hazardous materials incident management system which must be in place. Where I would have suffered a minor cardiac incident some years back if anyone even thought of recommending this approach to me, I think we should realise that with the huge budget constraints we currently face many smaller services have no choice but to go down this road. The main concern I have here however, is that the responsibility to deal with the risks of hazardous materials still rests with formal fire and rescue services and this is a responsibility we cannot delegate. A further concern relates to the emergency intervention phase of a hazmat incident for which private operators are not normally geared for.
The second and more involved approach would be to establish a formal response system which includes all possible stake holders. These include the fire service, police, traffic services, roads department, hospitals and emergency medical services, the media, public works personnel, contractors and environmental authorities. The bottom line is that your hazmat team is one component of a greater system including all these role players. Only when your response system is fully planned, trained and operational, will you develop a more accurate picture of whether you need a hazmat team and what its role would be.
The formal hazmat team
The first consideration relates to training. Hazmat training in South Africa is derived from the United States “National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Standard 472, Professional Competence of Responders to Hazardous Material Incidents”. Within this standard there are five generally accepted levels to which hazardous materials responders should be trained:
First responder awareness level
This level of training applies to persons: (1) who are likely to witness or discover a hazardous materials release and (2) who have received prior training in initiating an emergency response sequence by notifying the proper authorities.
This is the first step in hazmat training and should not only be presented to trainee fire fighters, but also to any other first responder who may in the course of their duties encounter a possible hazardous materials incident. People who have completed this level will be able to recognise a hazardous materials event and activate the necessary resources needed to deal with the incident.
First responder operations level
Individuals at this level form part of the initial response group at the site of an actual or potential hazardous materials incident. They protect persons, property, and/or the environment at risk from the effects of the release. They will respond in a purely defensive manner. Their primary function is not to stop the release but to contain it, if possible, from a safe distance, while preventing additional exposures.
All fire department members should be trained to this level before the next step in the development of the team is taken.
Hazardous materials technician
This is the primary technical intervention phase to which every member of the hazmat team must be trained. Technicians are responsible for spill control and plugging and patching the source of the release. We must at this point also appreciate that activities at this level might not only be limited to product control. What if we have a hazardous cargo truck driver trapped in the cab of a vehicle spewing some evil form of liquid death who needs to be extricated from his predicament? As if that isn’t enough I remember an incident in 2001 on the East Rand, when technicians had to remove one ton contaminated acid containers using forklifts. All this while wearing level A suits!
Hazardous materials specialist
This highly specialised level has not yet been fully implemented in South Africa and is designed to respond with and provide support to hazmat technicians. Their duties require a more directed or specific knowledge of the various substances involved in the incident. People at this level have training equal to the technician level but specialise in specified areas. Areas that come to mind here are explosives, petro-chemicals, poisons etc.
Hazardous materials incident commander
This is the person responsible for the management of the entire operation. In addition to his/her knowledge of hazardous materials, he/she should also be familiar with the department’s incident command system, any unified command structures and the roles and responsibilities of other agencies involved. Incident command systems relying on the use of private contractors to carry out the technician level activities, must ensure that any agreements reflect exactly what is required from all parties as well as defining the boundaries in which they should operate.
Once the above structures are identified and people are trained in sufficient numbers to the desired levels the basis of a hazmat team is formed.
Equipment
In all probability the most expensive component will be the acquisition and maintenance of the equipment required to furnish the team. If you can afford the luxury of a custom-built hazmat unit you should not have much trouble in equipping it. In most cases however, this might not be possible and you might want to consider refurbishing an old fire truck (just throw off the body, tank and pump and slap a whole lot of compartments onto it) or finding a similar vehicle with reasonably good carrying capacity, which can be transformed into a hazmat unit. A fundamental mistake I have seen on some hazmat units is the tendency to build an “integrated” unit which includes the equipment storage, command post and decontamination area all together. This is totally undesirable for a number of reasons. The first (and most important) being the fact that you might compromise your entire equipment cache and command staff by moving them into a position too close to the red zone in an effort to utilise the decon chamber. Noise from recharging breathing apparatus would also make any command functions difficult to perform. In various cases services have made use of maritime containers to house the various modules such as command, equipment stores and decon and by means of a prime mover and crane been able to strategically site them to the greatest advantage. The downside here is most probably going to be the limitations of having one prime mover for three (or more) pods.
The next big cost item will be the personal protective equipment (PPE). Here again the level of hazmat response will dictate the type of PPE required and the cost thereof. The main objective here is maximum respiratory and dermal protection when: (1) entering atmospheres containing unknown substances; or (2) entering atmospheres containing known substances in unknown concentrations. If your approach will be largely defensive, you will probably be able to get away with a good level B protection programme (maximum respiratory protection utilising self-contained breathing apparatus [SCBA] and a lesser degree of dermal protection). You will obviously have to think very carefully about this because we know that the incident will almost always dictate what level of protection we need. Level A (maximum respiratory protection by utilising SCBA and maximum dermal protection from a totally encapsulating chemical suit) is a necessity when working in a situation where your technicians will come into direct contact with the product. Generally though, the majority of your responses will only require level B protection.
Two vital things to keep in mind: (1) there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Chemical suits do not offer protection against all chemicals. A lot of work has been done in recent years to manufacture a fairly good general use type of suit, but even then it will not provide comprehensive protection under all conditions. Most manufacturers provide what is called a “suit compatibility chart” with their product. Nowadays it takes the form of a DVD and will give you information on the compatibility of the suit to a particular chemical as well as the “safe working time” to which the garment can be exposed to the chemical. The best practice here would be to look at the risk and acquire a small selection of suits which can be used for specific incidents. (2) Chemical suits cannot survive on its own. The suit is only one component of an entire ensemble which consists of boots, over-boots, under-gloves, over-gloves, hardhats, personal alarms, communications systems and breathing apparatus. This is then all taped up with a purpose made chemical resistant sealing tape. A comprehensive procedure for donning chemical PPE must form part of your team’s standard operating procedures (SOP) and must be strictly monitored. Any damage to the suits and it must be replaced. In many cases it would be ok to decontaminate the suits after an incident and put them back into service. This needs to be carefully controlled and no unnecessary chances should be taken.
Many hazmat teams I know of tend to make use of standard 300bar breathing apparatus which generally provide the wearer with an effective 20 minutes of work time. When you consider that the technician needs to enter the hot zone from a safe area, perform his/her work, exit the zone and go through a decon process you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that this is totally impractical. Two solutions exist: (1) airline systems (2) long duration breathing apparatus. I would recommend the composite 90 minute duration SCBAs due to the fact that it sits inside the suit and does not, like the airline system, create an “imperfection” where it enters the suit. Airline systems also limit the distance of operation and can cause snag hazards when moving in and around piping etc. The composite cylinder SCBA is usually of aluminium construction and has a form of carbon-fibre wrap and provides a number of advantages specifically in terms of its weight and obvious duration. The main consideration when selections are made must be around the time it will take from when the suit is donned by the wearer and sealed off. The wearer may have to wait for a while in his/her suit before entering the hot zone and then walk quite a distance to the worksite. Once the job is completed he/she has to return to the decontamination site, go through the decon process before removing his/her suit. Also consider that the wearer might be working in hot weather under extremely stressful conditions which might have an adverse effect on oxygen use.
One of the main indicators for suit selection will be the properties of chemical involved. It is here where correct and accurate monitoring plays its role. It would be prohibitively expensive to purchase all needed monitoring equipment and it is for this reason that we need to go back to our initial risk assessment and try to find some sort of compromised solution. I use the word “compromise” advisedly because this is the one area where this decision can come back to haunt you.
The first approach must be to acquire a “multi-gas” detector which provides you with information on a wide spectrum of gasses. The biggest limitation of many of these detectors is that the detector needs to know what it is looking for. In other words: you have to have prior knowledge of the possible released gas and then set the detector up to monitor the atmosphere for it. Many services will generally make use of a confined space alarm system which will at least provide data on oxygen quality, flammability and carbon monoxide levels.
For a technician level hazmat team the following classes of monitoring kit should be available:
- Combustible gas monitor/alarm which detects the presence of flammable gases and indicates the approximate concentration of the gas/vapour in percentage concentrations of the lower explosive limit (LEL).
- Oxygen level monitor which measures the level of oxygen in the atmosphere. Despite the fact that the team will be wearing respiratory protection it is important to know if excessive oxygen is present or if some other gas or vapour is using or displacing the available oxygen.
- Calorimetric tubes which measure the concentration of a specific chemical or chemical family in parts per million (ppm) or percentage concentrations. The wide spectrum of tubes available will require that you include this in your risk assessment and decide on a range of tubes that will cover most eventualities. Remember that these tubes only have a limited shelf-life and have to be replaced after a period of time or after use.
The possible risk to which your team may respond, could dictate that other gas specific detectors, pH paper and flame ionisation and photo-ionisation detectors be included in their arsenal.
Once the team is kitted out and knows what product they are dealing with they will have to enter the hot zone and try to control the released chemical. The equipment required for these tasks will range from non-sparking tools to over drums and will be once again dictated by the specific risks that could be presented. In many cases a bit of imagination would save you a lot of money. Buying a state-of-the-art, pneumatic leak sealing bag might look very good but could become a very expensive donation when it gets badly damaged by an aggressive chemical on which it was used. A wide range of industrial plugging and patching devises do exist, which can also be used in hazardous materials emergencies. The first prize would obviously be to equip the team with purpose-made, chemically resistant plugging and patching kit. Understanding, however, that the “chemically resistant” part of it could be subjective.
Finally, if you need specialised equipment such as intrinsically safe radios and lighting you will need to acquire it.
Information systems
It is very surprising to find out how few emergency services actually do have an up-to-date chemical information system. Very few fire services and even less ambulance services have access to even the most basic chemical information and most responders normally rely on emergency response guidebooks, which although valuable, cannot provide comprehensive information on the properties of the product, the emergency response procedures, patient treatment protocols, definitive medical care and rehabilitation of the contaminated area. A number of products capable of providing this information are commercially available and can be fashioned to cater for a specific risk profile. A good solution here would be to access a number of open-source applications such as the “Wiser” chemical hazard information system. This will need some planning and a bit of training for your communications people but will assist your information and planning officer and incident commander with a roadmap for the management of the incident.
Decontamination
Probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of hazmat response is decontamination. I have seen many state-of-the-art decon units being commissioned by fire services with impressive looking showers and changing facilities but with no capacity to deal with the run-off of the decontamination process. Equally, when I have seen some sort of run-off management capacity there has been virtually no method of disposing the contaminated water safely. Once water from a wet decon process has made contact with the contaminated suit and equipment, it is also contaminated and needs to be disposed of correctly. It is a fact that many products can be diluted (and thereby neutralised) by means on copious amounts of water and may not require further disposal of the decon water. We will almost always have to contain the decon run-off and dispose of it in an acceptable manner, usually at an approved facility.
As with all equipment the nature of the product to which the team is exposed will dictate the type of decontamination required.
Wet decontamination is most commonly used to decontaminate personnel, tools, and large equipment. For this water, hoses, brushes, buckets, cleaning agents, tarps, pools, pumps, and tanks to hold the contaminated water, are needed. Plastic chairs are also helpful for responders who need to take off PPE. Durable disposal bags should also be provided for bagging items that will not be reused and need to be disposed of, such as inner gloves, disposable under-suits, tape, etc.
Dry decontamination will normally be used in situations where the product involved will have a negative reaction to water and usually involves bagging everything that comes out of the hot zone. This process could require brushes to remove gross contamination and bags to collect all affected materials.
The majority of equipment needed for decontamination is disposable products that need not be bought at high cost. It must be stressed however that durable, leak resistant bags, tarps and pools that can handle a fair amount of abuse, should be provided.
When planning your decontamination procedure remember that the decon team must be provided with the same level of protection as the entry team. When an entry team has come into physical contact with a hazardous chemical and leaves the hot zone it is effectively bringing that product with it to the decon area, thereby potentially contaminating people in that area. I have often seen decon teams clad only in level B protection (or fire fighting gear) whilst decontaminating responders in level A suits.
How big should my team be?
The minimum size for the hazmat team is six people. This is made up of two entry team members, a two-man back-up team who will relieve the entry team to complete unfinished work or act as a rescue team and a two-man decon team. This is of course assuming that all other activities on scene such as water supply, incident command, scene safety, medical screening have been taken care of.
Here again the importance of a well thought out system comes to the fore. A quick arrangement of rotating your six members eg entry team is replaced by back-up team in hot zone…decon team becomes back-up team…and entry team does a quick turnaround to assume the decon role, will provide you with an effective “force multiplier”, which might just get you through the day without too many headaches.
Conclusion
In this article I have focussed on what is needed to establish a hazmat team. I have deliberately kept away from operational issues and will focus on that in future articles. The most important message I can leave with you is the old adage of “knowledge is power”. There is no way that any fire service can deal with all possible hazmat incidents. It would just be too impractical and too expensive. By establishing a good response to the types of incidents you are likely to encounter and by developing escalation plans to deal with a major incident, which might require possible national resources (and testing those plans) you should be able to respond to this very technical challenge. A hazmat incident commander must be able to (more than anything else) think on his/her feet and think big.
I am hoping that this article motivates you to just go back and have another look at how your team is structured and if they will be able to survive the next “liquid death” release they will have to respond to.