The call from police dispatch crackled over the two-way radio: "Police officer sent to a local hospital with injuries after checking on material deposited at an illegal dump site." Yolo County's hazardous material team immediately responded to the location with all kinds of specialized equipment.
Firefighters from UC Davis, West Sacramento, Davis, Woodland and Yolo County's Environmental Health went charging to the Yolo County fairgrounds in Woodland Monday for a practice drill. Every three months for the past year and half, these agencies have been working at improving their coordination, timing, chemical recognition and clean up skills.
These days, firefighting involves a lot more than just knowing how to knock down flames. The fire service is also trained to deal with hazardous materials that can disrupt transportation on highways, cause evacuations of homes and buildings, and result in injuries and death. "Haz mat" teams respond to any substance (solid, liquid or gas) that is capable of posing unreasonable risk to health, safety, environment or property.
"I think our biggest threat in this county comes from the transportation of hazardous materials along our roadways and rail lines," said Pat Whelan, division fire chief of Woodland.
"There are many businesses in our region that store and sell products that could be considered hazardous if they are not handled properly," said Michael Chandler, UC Davis fire chief. "In addition, railways, fixed sites, pipelines, wat-erways, storage tanks, airports, manufacturing of illegal drugs and illegal dumping can cause major headaches for county response teams unless they are train-ed and equipped to handle such events."
As a result of the anticipated need, the UC Davis Fire Department made a commitment in 1994 to become the county leader in handling hazardous materials.
"We have thousands of laboratories on campus that contain chemicals that can be dangerous if not handled properly; so we need to have the confidence that we can identify spilled material and deal with the clean-up," said Tony Rossetto, UC Davis fire captain and leader of Monday's haz mat drill.
The campus has a $300,000 haz mat truck that has become a model for other fire departments because of its design. Computers on board contain a chemical inventory with specific information helpful to emergency response teams. In addition, the computers model how current wind speed and humidity levels can move plumes of "dirty air" - information helpful to law enforcement agencies in case people need to evacuate homes and businesses. The truck also contains all the equipment needed to enter extremely toxic sites.
UC Davis fire fighters are the only ones in the county that are trained to enter "hot zones" that require special airtight rubber suits. These $5,000 moon-like suits are designed to enter contamination zones that require the maximum protection for skin and respiratory functions.
"It takes about 25 minutes for an entry team to put on these specialized suits," said Rossetto. "Perhaps the most important rigging is their communication package that contains specialized radios so that they can talk to us once they are inside the 'hot zone.'
About half of the UC Davis career firefighters have been trained in accordance with National Fire Protection Association standards and are certified by the California Specialized Training Institute as either hazardous materials specialists or technicians.
"The chemistry courses we took to meet the qualifications for 'hot zone' entry requirements were tougher than the chem courses I took in college, because we covered so much material in a brief period of time," said Adam Mitchell, a UC Davis firefighter who started his career in the fire service as a student firefighter on campus.
"Today's drill was a good experience for us because it was mandatory for our entry team to collect the different samples at the site without mixing the material," Rossetto said. "If mixing occurred, the level of danger escalates quickly."