Teamwork Is Stressed as Lifesaver In Hazardous Materials Incidents
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In its first two years of operation, the Hazardous Materials Response Team of the Jacksonville, Fla., Fire Department has responded to 370 incidents.
Captain Ronald G. Gore initiated, trains and currently directs the threeshift, 15-man team.
“With an increasing number of incidents, and a proliferation of hazardous chemicals, compounds, and products being manufactured, transported, stored and processed within the city,” recounted Ron Gore, “Chief Wesley Yarborough gave his blessing to the formation of a specially trained, highly knowledgeable, and well-equipped hazardous materials team in January 1977. The team was recruited from volunteers within the combat fire companies and placed in a centrally located station with easy access to the expressway system, the port, the storage complex area, and the rail yards.
“As soon as we had the men we wanted, we began to beg, borrow, and …. well, not quite steal…. the specialized tools and equipment needed to deal with hazardous materials.’
Such tools and equipment are as basic as a 13-volume reference library carried in the cab of the team’s remodeled pumper and as esoteric as a pH meter for determining the acidic or alkaline quality of a product.
There are extensive patch and leak kits and materials. These include chlorine kits, precut rubber patches of various sizes and shapes, pointed wooden dowels and plugs that can be hammered into ruptured pipes and other leaks, hydraulic jack3s and chains for clamping patches to tanks of all dimensions, and enough assorted pipe fittings, sleeves, brackets, compression plates, valves, elbows, and joints to make a plumber green with envy. Team members often work under frightening conditions, but their basic stock in trade is their ability to patch any leak in any vessel, container, cylinder, or tank.
“We’ve grown quite expert in stopping leaks,” agreed Fire Fighter Bob Masculine, an 18-year veteran, “although we don’t claim to be repair people, and we don’t want to gain a reputation for being in the repair business. We are a first-aid company for leaks involving hazardous materials just as a rescue company is to victims. Our primary objective is to control the situation.”
Additional equipment includes explosive vapor detectors, dosimeters, sorbent materials for pickup and disposal of small spills, dispersants and an infrared viewer for identifying heat patterns through walls.
“Most fire companies carry 15 to 20 gallons of foam,” noted Gore. “We carry 300 gallons.”
Looks for eagerness
Asked about rumors that he recruits team members like a Big 10 Conference coach recruits football players, Ron Gore laughed, then added: “Firemen establish a reputation. It’s really eagerness that we look for—a desire to learn, a motivation to go out and train. Our people are like racehorses; you have to hold them back. We just can’t use a man who thinks a fireman’s most important duties are to polish the checkerboard and feed the Dalmation.”
The Jacksonville Hazardous Materials Team has developed certain disciplines that guide their response to any hazardous materials incident.
“Once you have a spill, it is too late to learn about the product, the vehicle it is transported in, or the container in which it is normally stored,” explained Gore. “You must have gathered the maximum possible amount of usable information beforehand. That’s why we stress both academic study and hands-on experience. It doesn’t help you much to know a particular product can kill you by inhalation, ingestion or absorption if you don’t know where the emergency shutoff valve is located on the type of vehicle normally used to transport that product.
Qualified team concept
“Any emergency service personnel can be trained to handle any type of emergency, including those related to hazardous materials,” emphasized Gore, “but it just stands to reason that people who have had extensive training and continuous experience in hazardous materials are going to be better prepared to answer such alarms than people who respond just occasionally. All fire personnel should have a good grasp of what is required to respond successfully to common, everyday incidents, but a highly qualified team can be of invaluable assistance to an incident commander when there is a threat of significant life or property loss.
Color photos by John Cashman
“A team will have been to so many incidents, dealt with so many chemicals and other hazardous substances, that it can relate better to the really hairy situations than the fellow who can merely say: ‘We went to one incident a few weeks ago, and the product reacted this way.’ That isn’t good enough,” the captain emphasized.
“When the adrenaline starts to flow, teamwork becomes super critical,” agreed Masculine. “When you are groping around under a tank car in an acid-gas-entry suit with a toxic product cascading over you, you have to know that if you take off this part , without fail, without being assigned, your partner is going to pick up the piece you need next.”
One inflexible discipline related to teamwork is that team members never work alone. The old Boy Scout buddy system has proven to he effective time and time again. Although all 15 team members have been in an emergency room at one time or another, no one has yet been seriously injured.
Terry Daniels was wearing an acidgas-entry suit while working atop a gushing tank car when he got hit on the leg with a stream of cryogenic liquid that cracked the leg of his butyl suit like glass. Raising both arms in the designated signal of distress, he was carried off the tank car and hosed down by his partner.
Bob Masculine ran out of air in an acid-gas-entry suit and had to be extricated by his partner. Another team member stepped into a hidden, 3-footdeep sump filled with a corrosive product and had to be pulled out and hosed down by other team mates.
“The product soaked my feet, legs, and thighs,” admitted Ron Gore ruefully, “but it was my face that was red for three weeks afterward.”
‘Our primary objective is to control the situation,” noted Lieutenant Dick Morphew. “We have learned from experience not to rush in. We lay back, analyze the situation, and attempt to evaluate the whole scene. We decide our tactics from a distance, sometimes with the aid of field glasses. We want to solve the problem. We don’t want to become part of it.”
“You can’t take anything for granted,” added Masculine. “We arrived at one incident described as ‘a chlorine leak’ to find 11 different hazardous materials jumbled together in layers. We first evaluate the situation, identify the product and its characteristics, consider evacuation requirements, and only then do we move ahead to stabilize the situation and achieve control.”
Like any good salesmen, team members know their territory. There is not a single major tank farm, rail yard, storage area, port area, or warehouse containing hazardous materials that team members have not reconnoitered in depth.
“We need to know what we are likely to find when we roll up to the main gate at three in the morning,” stressed Gore.
Preplan diagram drawn
On any preplanning visit, team members develop a diagram of each location visited that provides information that would be crucial in an emergency, such as the location of emergency shutoff electrical switches and mechanical valves; descriptions of tanks, cylinders, vessels, vehicles, and facilities encountered; location of the nearest water supplies; and storage locations for various hazardous materials. All such preplanning data sheets are numbered and kept in a book on the apparatus. An alphabetical cross-index permits immediate location of the needed data sheet when a call is received. On each subsequent preplanning visit, the preplanning data sheet is updated as necessary.
“When we go to a facility to preplan, people there begin to view us as helpers, advisers, as a resource,” noted Gore. “They come to respect our knowledge and abilities. They also want to impress on us that they are competent, knowledgeable people. Perhaps with our assistance and guidance, they become able to operate their facility in a safer fashion. Also, we learn the problems under which they operate. They learn our techniques and and we learn theirs.
“When they do have a serious situation develop, they call us at once. We visit plants every day. We definitely feel we keep the number of incidents to a minimum by constant and continuous preplanning with all handlers of hazardous materials located in the city.”
Photo by Steve Boudreau
Photo by John Cashman
“You cannot know everything about a product or a situation,” explained Gore, “but you must be able to surround yourself with people who have the necessary knowledge and expertise. There must be one location at a site where these people can interact with the incident commander. At any major incident, an incredible number of people can become involved and be quite necessary to successful control of the situation.”
At one recent incident, it was estimated that 27 different knowledgeable persons were involved in addition to the hazardous materials team. It is not unusual to have on hand representatives of the police, civil defense, EPA, the manufacturer of the chemical involved, the designer of the tank car, the military, various federal, state and municipal agencies, private cleanup companies, earth-moving concerns, the media, and disposal contractors. For an incident commander to maintain control and utilize these various skilled people to the maximum degree possible, a command post is an absolute necessity.
If a person does not need to be at the scene, if his expertise is not necessary to stabilize the threat, then he is told to leave. This applies to response personnel every bit as much as it applies to curious bystanders.
“Once they have done their thing, see that they remove themselves to a safe distance,” Gore said. “People want to be helpful. You have to control their access to the scene or you may find a guy in shorts and sunglasses looking over your shoulder as you crawl up the side of a methyl bromide car in your acid-gasentry suit and airpack. It happens all the time. Don’t let it happen to you. Beware of the guy who thinks he is immune.”
Availability of equipment
Few fire departments are likely to have bulldozers or other earth-moving equipment on hand. There also can be a need for empty tank cars and tank trucks to transfer a product, specially trained and equipped track rebuilding crews, chemists, experts in pesticides and poisons, explosives and demolition people, vacuum trucks for scooping up spills, or similar equipment and expertise.
“You must know where you can obtain such assistance at three in the morning or on Sunday afternoon of a three-day weekend,” Gore pointed out. An itemized card file identifying all such equipment and services, the location where they can be obtained, and the name and number of the contact person is a must. For each item, an alternate source of supply should be identified if at all possible.”
The Jacksonville team maintains a hazardous materials incident control checklist for every incident it responds to. Such checklists are invaluable for subsequent training of response personnel, later preplanning visits to similar facilities, for providing continuity when one site commander and team goes off duty and is replaced by another, to enable followup on contacts of a crucial nature, and to provide factual and timely basic data and information for any reports or testimony that may later have to be developed.
The checklist calls for the following information: incident location and time, hazardous materials involved, dangers of involved materials, what happened (what caused the incident), civilian coordinator, incident commander, weather conditions at time of incident, weather forecast, shipper and shipping point, carrier and vehicle operator, consignee and destination, vehicle type and characteristics, vehicle number, vehicle DOT classification, bill of lading number, air monitor reading, water monitor reading, and other pertinent information.
This checklist is normally initiated as soon as an alarm is received. It is maintained and updated at the command post throughout the duration of the incident, and it is ultimately filed at the hazardous materials team’s station.
Safety company formed
To pass on the lessons learned in Jacksonville, Gore recently initiated Safety Systems, Inc., a Jacksonville corporation that offers hazardous materials incident prevention, control, and investigative consultant services, as well as training, to public safety organizations, industry, and transportation groups.
Photo by John Cashman
Photos by John Cash man
There are all kinds of classroom programs dealing with hazardous materials, but Safety Systems has come up with one of the most complete hands-on, 40-hour hazardous materials seminars presently available. All seminars related to hazardous materials are held in Palatka, Fla., 60 miles south of Jacksonville. A motel is used for classroom instruction and the training ground of the Palatka Fire Department is used for field evolutions.
Extensive sets and props in the training area provide a Disneyland of scenarios where trainees can test the knowledge gained in the classroom. Kach afternoon, trainees don full protective gear and split into four groups. They evaluate and respond to hazardous materials problems taken from actual incidents.
Leaking tank car problem
In one scenario, a tanker truck is leaking a corrosive liquid. Trainees must determine what the liquid is, whether it is acidic or alkaline, and stop the leak. Another scenario looks quite simple, but there is a catch. Two autos. are burning in a pool of gasoline, but one auto is powered by an LPG cylinder in the trunk. Leaking, burning propane is continuously reigniting the gasoline.
At another scenario, an industrial site, trainees find a roaring chemical fire with company-supplied dry chemical fire extinguishers readily at hand. The only problem is the extinguishers haven’t been used or tested in years, and the dry chemical has compacted. Trainees have to empty, refill and recharge the dry chemical extinguishers to put out the fire.
Across the training field, other trainees are faced with a weird-looking contraption consisting of a pressurized tank and a jungle of connecting pipes, valves, hoses and tubing. The instructor can set the contraption to replicate any one of 10 different types of liquid and/or gas leaks. Teams of trainees have to evaluate the system, locate the leak, and control the leak without endangering themselves.
Propane tank fire
A further scenario presents a commercial-sized propane tank with a broken valve causing flame impingement of short duration on the tank. Trainees have to attack the flame roaring from the tank, locate the emergency shutoff valve, and stop the flow of gas. Another scenario attacked by trainees is a school bus involved in a wreck with a fuel oil delivery truck. Fuel oil has pooled around the vehicles and ignited. Trainees must control the fire and evacuate victims from the bus, first using water alone and then different types of foam.
A pit at the rear of the training field features a tractor-trailer carrying diesel fuel. The tank has ruptured and the fuel ignites. Trainees must determine the correct extinguishing agent from an assortment available and quell the fire.
At another location, trainees find a petroleum loading rack fire. An overhead pipeline has ruptured and the fuel becomes ignited. Two trucks are located in the midst of a burning pool, and three vertical storage tanks immediately adjacent to the loading rack are endangered by radiant heat.
Meanwhile, trainees at midfield are involved with a “Christmas tree” of pipes and valves spewing burning propane gas at every opening. They must figure out how to shut off a valve under the flaming gas.
Other trainees are wrestling with the problem of how to stem an ever-widening pool of bunker fuel creeping across a small pond. Once they have boomed the spill, they are presented with a variety of sorbent materials and told to clean up the spill and dispose of the product in a safe manner. At another location, trainees are presented with an acid spill and required to pick it up with sorbent materials.
After five days of combined classroom training and hands-on field evolutions at Palatka, 45 fire and public safety personnel returned to their homes throughout the southeast well prepared to face the real thing.
