HazMat
HazMat
The Hazardous Materials Team is responsible for mitigating and stabilizing any hazardous material incident within the Orland Fire District’s response area. We have a supply of equipment, including hazardous gas meters, radiation detectors, and leak kits. Our Hazardous Materials Team is responsible for a large variety of possible issues involving all types of dangerous materials. There are underground pipelines, industrial chemicals, and radiological medical equipment within our response area. We also have a large amount of vehicle traffic in the Orland area involving hazardous materials.
Lieutenant Steven Prohaska
The past year was quite a challenging one due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we were limited with the amount of in-person training, we could attend, we still found alternatives to help the team progress further. Members worked on what we considered to be our strategic goals for the Team. Identifying these items allowed us to enhance our training objectives. We also had members participate in a variety of online training classes held throughout the year. The class topics ranged from radiological emergencies, to dealing with anhydrous ammonia incidents. We continued our training with various isolation devices, such as the IsoPod and PAPR respiratory device. These devices allowed us to deal with a significant surge of COVID patients all at once, should the need have arisen. The isolation devices will now remain a part of our regular equipment inventory. We are one of the only specialty teams in the area with these specialized pieces of equipment. This enables us to provide a higher level of service to our citizens. The team also purchased new and updated leak plug kits. These leak plug kits will help us mitigate leaks in various styles of containers and pipes. We also started the process of testing a new type of four gas meter. The four gas meter is carried on every front line fire apparatus and helps us investigate various kinds of gas leaks or odor investigations. With the ever-changing advances in technology, we felt the need to start looking into updating this critical piece of equipment. One of the most significant accomplishments we achieved was switching over to a new style of hazardous materials foam. Due to recently passed legislation, most of the foam we carried had to be phased out because an ingredient was discovered to be cancerous. Battalion Chief Moore was instrumental in the process of researching the most feasible and financially sound option for a replacement foam that could be used on all our apparatus.
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Team members donned fully encapsulated hazardous material suits to mitigate a simulated leaking chlorine tank. They used what we refer to as an “A” kit to stop the leak in the tank
