By August Vernon
Responders attending our classes on responses to clandestine drug labs and improvised explosive devices have expressed interest in some type of field guide. Please see the attached Clandestine Drug Labs First Responder Awareness Card and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) First Responder Awareness Card. Reviewed by members of clandestine drug lab and hazardous device response teams, these sheets are designed to aid any first responder (fire, EMS, law enforcement, and so on) with minimum training in the first 30 minutes of an incident.
Download Field Response Guides for Clandestine Drug Labs HERE (pdf)
Download Field Response Guides for Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) HERE (pdf)
See also “Strategies for Surviving the IED Response”, also by August Vernon, from Fire Engineering‘s June 2007 issue.
August Vernon is an assistant coordinator for the Forsyth County (NC) Office of Emergency Management. He returned to this position in 2005, after a year in Iraq as a security contractor conducting long-range convoy security operations involved in several improvised explosives devices (IEDs) and combative engagements. He has been a member of emergency management since 2000 and of the fire service since 1990. Vernon served in the U.S. Army as a nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) operations specialist. He teaches courses in IED response, incident management, OPSEC for public safety, hazmat operations, and terrorism/WMD response. He has been published in several national publications.
