Special Firefighting Teams Step In When the Going Gets Toxic : Poison--It’s Their Dish

Four fire engines pulled into the parking lot behind a Van Nuys beauty parlor. It was the first call of the day for the A-Shift of the hazardous-materials task force based at Los Angeles Fire Department Station 39.

The beauty parlor’s owner had reported that a green liquid reeking of “the smell you get when you peel the back off a Polaroid print” was percolating through the linoleum floor at the rear of the shop.

A firefighter who moonlights as a plumber soon discovered the source: a leaking drain pipe. Another member of the task force ran some tests and identified the liquid: dirty water.

On a typical day, the city’s so-called “haz mat” task force encounters as many false alarms as any standard firefighting unit. And like most firefighters, members of the task force do not live for ordinary days, but for emergencies.

They don many-layered protective suits and walk into a burning factory or laboratory, or plug a leak in a derailed tank car, or collect a sample of possibly deadly chemicals spilling from unmarked drums.

When they are summoned to handle potentially hazardous materials, they must always assume the worst, said Capt. Patrick Klein, who heads the A-Shift squad.

“There is no such thing as a false alarm,” Klein said. “We treat every case as a worst case.”

In an era when almost any industrial fire or overturned tanker truck has the potential to release hazardous fumes or streams of chemicals, fire departments and other emergency services have been forced to dramatically change the ways they respond to emergencies. The result is the modern “haz mat” unit, which has evolved in fits and starts over the past decade.

The city Fire Department maintains three hazardous materials squads--in Van Nuys, Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. The county Fire Department operates its own specialized hazardous-materials team, and so does the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

There is still a long way to go, however, before the management of such teams becomes as smooth as that of other emergency units. Because the county, city and sheriff’s teams are all trained under different guidelines, for example, many firefighters admit there are few generally accepted guidelines for handling some situations.

“It’s all so darn brand new we’re learning daily,” said Deputy Chief Donald Anthony, who directs fire suppression for the city Fire Department. “We’ve been lucky that we haven’t had a really serious ‘haz mat’ incident,” he said. But, he added, the possibility is always there.

Personnel in the hazardous-material task force stationed in Van Nuys keep a close watch on the numerous high-technology, industrial and manufacturing businesses throughout the San Fernando Valley.

“Each station has those places in their minds,” Klein said. Every member of the unit has memorized a map of the Valley with potential disasters noted, he said.

In many cases, task force members meet with business owners and chart “pre-fire plans” for plants and warehouses. “We walk through the building and talk about what would happen if a fire were to take place,” Klein said.

Some of the Valley’s smaller businesses present the most potential hazards.

“Our region has the largest number of hazardous-chemical users in the city,” Klein said. Most of those users are in a mile-wide swath of heavy industry that bisects the Valley, following the Southern Pacific railroad line from southeast to northwest, he said.

“The harbor in sheer quantities has more hazardous chemicals, but when you put something in a big container--like a 500,000-gallon steel tank--it’s real safe. The problem comes when you put it in a 55-gallon drum. Eventually, that’s broken down to six- or eight-ounce amounts. . . .” The result, he said, is that “we’ve got 500,000 people out there buying it a gallon at a time.”

“If we get a call up in San Fernando, I say ‘uh-oh,’ ” said Michael Gross, a member of the unit since it started. There are many small plating firms and other businesses there that store or use a variety of hazardous chemicals, he said.

Of the 81 calls handled by the Van Nuys unit last year concerning hazardous materials, 61 were determined to be minor incidents, according to city Fire Department records. They involved such things as spillage of chemicals used in maintaining swimming pools, illegal dumping of industrial solvents or motor oil, and a fire involving janitorial chemicals.

Major Incidents

The 20 incidents recorded as major included fires that consumed dangerous cancer-causing chemicals, natural-gas leaks, a break in a crude-oil pipeline, and the discovery of caches of illegally stored or dumped chemicals.

Not since April 14, 1985, when fire swept the Research Organic and Inorganic Chemicals Co. warehouse in Sun Valley, spewing clouds of toxic smoke and streams of water tainted with chemicals, has the Fire Department’s ability to respond to a potentially disastrous emergency involving chemicals been severely tested.

That fire sent more than 50 firefighters to the hospital, many suffering from the effects of toxic chemicals.

Since then, improvements have been made in the system for handling such emergencies, according to Los Angeles fire and health officials.

For the first time, uniform standards were established and agreed upon for training of the task force. A state law passed in 1986 required that all personnel who respond to emergencies involving hazardous substances conform to the same training and education. The curriculum, however, has not yet been decided.

Improvement Expected

In addition, the response to disasters in Los Angeles is expected to improve dramatically during the next two years as detailed inventories of hazardous chemicals at almost every business are collected and entered into a computer.

Finally, firefighters’ unions have successfully pushed for increased monitoring of chemicals to which task-force members are exposed, so that health problems later in life can be more easily traced to early exposures.

“We’ve come a long way,” said James Daneker. In 1976, he and another firefighter with whom he alternated shifts constituted the city’s hazardous-materials unit.

“It started out with a series of fires involving chemicals that caused a lot of firemen to get injured,” Daneker said. “They found out I had a good background in chemistry and made me a specialist.”

In those days, Daneker and his partner shared the responsibility for entering dangerous environments, stopping leaks and identifying samples, he said.

When he got to the scene, Daneker said, “I’d have to grab somebody from one of the other fire-suppression companies on the scene to suit up with me. . . . I would quickly teach them how to put the suit on.”

Daneker is now a captain in the Fire Department and one of four specialists on call 24 hours a day to respond to chemical hazards.

When he does so now, it is in one of two converted mobile homes, each crammed with sophisticated communications gear, a computer and a small laboratory.

The front section of the vehicles has a cellular telephone that can be used to contact a 24-hour hot line operated by the Chemical Manufacturers Assn., which can quickly identify thousands of chemicals by description.

The rear of the vehicle has large work tables and chalk boards, as well as a miniature chemistry laboratory equipped with a vacuum hood to capture hazardous vapors.

The Fire Department’s Van Nuys hazardous-materials team consists of four men on each shift, who have all received special training. The 10 remaining firefighters on each shift are considered part of the hazardous-materials task force, having received less specialized training than squad members, but more than a standard firefighter.

The county Fire Department, which has three hazardous-materials squads--in Carson, City of Industry and north of Newhall--has higher standards than the city department.

Training Required

According to Battalion Chief Jim Sheppard, who is responsible for hazardous-material operations in the county, each specialist takes an 80-hour course and works as an intern with a squad for 160 hours before he is considered a hazardous-materials specialist.

The city Fire Department is trying to get funds to have each squad member take a 160-hour course in the specialty at the State Fire Marshal’s office, said Capt. Mike Varney, at the Van Nuys unit.

The hazardous-material emergency personnel are called when the first fire or police unit on the scene of an emergency determines that there is a potentially dangerous gas, chemical or burning material involved.

The job of the squads is to stop the spread of any chemical hazard, be it a flood of spilled chemicals or a smoky fire. After that, specialists from the county Department of Health Services, all of whom have degrees in chemistry or occupational health, oversee any cleanup.

Along with the standard complement of vehicles found at every fire station, each hazardous-materials task force has a 1972 American La France pumper truck that has been rebuilt to hold the myriad items required by the squads--a variety of protective suits, breathing apparatus, decontamination and testing equipment, telescope and kits for sealing a puncture in a gas cylinder.

When called to a scene, squad members first gather information on the nature of the business or chemicals involved, judging by everything from the color of the smoke to any peculiar odor, Klein said.

Meanwhile, one of the squad members scans the dozens of books crammed on a shelf behind the squad truck’s front seat to identify chemicals and determine the nature of the hazard.

It is crucial to know as much as possible, Klein said, because the protective suits carried in color-coded bags in the rear of the truck only protect against certain chemicals or conditions. The wrong suit exposed to the wrong chemical can literally come apart at the seams.

Three of the suits inflate with clean air, like space suits, to shield the wearer and prevent any exposure to dangerous vapors. The others, which fit loosely like coveralls, are designed primarily to protect against dust or splashing liquids.

The squad frequently performs arduous physical tasks while dressed in layers of bulky, hot protective clothing. It is all part of the job.

“Sometimes you have to wear four pairs of gloves,” said Alan Pennington, who was in charge of “haz mat” gear until his recent transfer. “After you take them off, you can pour the sweat out of them.”