HazMat Team

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Permalink Reply by Greg Noll on March 16, 2008 at 10:35am

First, thanks for stepping forward and taking the lead on this discussion!

When an IC asks for / requests a HazMat Team (or a HazMat Entry Unit per NIMS Resource Typing defs), they are actually asking for an operational capability consisting of personnel and equipment who can perform specific tasks that are unique to the HM emergency response environment. Those include things such as the ability to perform advanced risk assessments, use and interpretation of monitoring and detection instruments, ability to operate in an contaminated enivironment, specialized response equipment, and technical decon capability.

If those are the operational capabilities that are being requested, then one must be trained to the HMT level. That doesn't mean that an organization might not use Operations-Level Responders provided with mission-specific capabilities to support an HMRT, but it's pretty hard to develop a technically sound argument that any training level less than HMT can be a HazMat Response Team.

NFPA 472 (2008) addressed this question by revising the definition of an HMRT to read "An organized group of trained response personnel operating under an emergency response plan and applicable SOP's who perform HM Technician level skills at HM/WMD incidents."

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Permalink Reply by Todd McKee on March 16, 2008 at 12:12pm

Mr Noll: Excellent Response! This is exaactly what I was looking for, some may not have known this and this question and your answer hopefully will be a refresher or knowledge can be gainded. Thanks !

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Permalink Reply by Todd McKee on March 16, 2008 at 3:46pm

Great Broter! Thank you for your reply and I hope this forum will bring some to love HazMat.....

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Schulz on January 18, 2010 at 2:49am

I work for different breed of haz-mat teams. We are one of a very few teams that is law enforcement based. I personally come from a fire background with 12 years of service before switching to the L.E. side. Our team has three people trained to command, three trained to technician level and 10 trained to operations level. Our team serves 17 county fire departments some with haz-mat trained members some without. When we arrive we work hand in hand with those fire departments and there members assist us at the level that they are trained to. When we work with the local fire departments we all work together under a unified command structure to complete the task at hand and secure the situation.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Hochstetler on January 18, 2010 at 4:06pm

On our team we have 20-25 Technicians, of these maybe half are WMD specialists and close to 80% are rail car specialists. Our IC is our Battalion Chief who may or may not be a tech depends on who is on that day. Then we have a team leader for each shift.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Becknell on January 18, 2010 at 6:56pm

As far as I know the highest level of training our county HazMat team has is chlorine specialist. Most of the rest are technician level with a few operations level. I know that most people would think that everyone would be Technician level but there are so many support functions involved that the Ops level members can contribute a lot while remaining in the cold zone.

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Permalink Reply by Todd McKee on January 20, 2010 at 9:54am

Good Stuff BROTHER! How many awarenss, operations, and techs do you have?

Ron Becknell said:

As far as I know the highest level of training our county HazMat team has is chlorine specialist. Most of the rest are technician level with a few operations level. I know that most people would think that everyone would be Technician level but there are so many support functions involved that the Ops level members can contribute a lot while remaining in the cold zone.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Miceli on January 20, 2010 at 1:01pm

Our team consists 15 career firefighters who are all Techs and all have their WMD Tech training in Anniston. We have about 4 or 5 other Tech's of which one or two were also WMD trained in Anniston. Of these folks, a few have also gone to prgrams in NV.

Three of our chief officers are HM command trained as well as having gone to Anniston for their IC program. We have one career LT. who is also trained as HM Safety Officer. The rest of our team (another 25+ or -) consists of POC personnel and volunteers from the surrounding departments and all are HM Ops trained.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Hoff on January 20, 2010 at 1:28pm

Our DOD dept has everything from first responder levels, ops and most of us being techs and IC's with a few train the trainers and the capability to do Level A to WMD and CBRN. The Army, the AF and our borough are about the only three who have dedicated hazmat teams with the boro being an all volunteer force. Most of the other volunteer and paid departments have mainly first responder and ops level with maybe a few techs or IC's.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Waterman on January 20, 2010 at 8:27pm

Our Team is made up of HazMat Technicians on the HazMat side -- in order to be on the team, "you" will be a HazMat Technician. Our Command is often Technician level, but could be someone from a federal agency, depending on the incident. Typically, Specialists are provided by the carrier, the manufacturer, or the facility.

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