Moon Suits in Mainstream

A tanker carrying liquid nitrogen topples on the freeway. A crude oil pipeline springs a leak. Police stumble on a smoking methamphetamine lab. Suspicious canisters and biological materials are unearthed in an Irvine backyard.

In a world brimming with potential chemical disasters, when such threats appear, police call in hazardous-materials crews--trained disaster response experts who operate away from the TV cameras and mostly under the public radar, making headlines only during the most high-profile incidents.

But these masked men and women have quietly become a fixture of modern society, routinely called upon to handle emergencies. Amid fears of chemical and biological terrorism, their specialized abilities are more valued than ever.

“You never know what a person’s going to do, whether intentionally or not,” said Dennis Ivison, a hazardous-materials team member in the Anaheim Fire Department.

Luckily, recent innovations help keep “hazmat” teams abreast of the threat.

“What [hazmat] is today, nobody thought or dreamed that is what we would be doing when we first started 20 years ago,” said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Al Barnhart, a senior team member of one of the nation’s first hazmat teams.

Today, there are five recognized hazardous-materials teams in Orange County, 14 in Los Angeles County and others across Southern California. Most consist of full-time firefighters who have received specialized training, and for whom hazmat duty is simply an added responsibility.

Anaheim, Santa Ana, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach have hazmat task forces. The Orange County Fire Authority has specialized teams of seven that are on 24-hour alert.

Hazmat teams vary in size from department to department, but all are staffed by firefighters who have undergone at least 160 hours of specialized training in handling a wide range of hazardous chemicals and materials. Many of them are “specialists,” which equates to 240 hours of schooling. In addition, the county Health Care Agency has a crew of specialists who offer expertise in chemical identification and long-term cleanup, among other things.

Hazmat instruction is intense. Trainees must absorb a college semester’s worth of chemistry in just two weeks, then take written and field exams.

“It’s really become more of a science,” said Mike Brady, chief of the hazardous-materials section for the California Specialized Training Institute, the state’s certifying body. “There was a joke that hazmat team members were like plumbers in spacesuits. But now they’re using complex databases and sophisticated monitoring equipment. They can take an unknown chemical and identify what that chemical is.”

Hazmat units have also attracted the attention of the federal government in recent years, particularly in the wake of the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway, an act of chemical terrorism that left 12 dead and thousands injured. It quickly dawned on federal authorities that by the time U.S. military and emergency-response personnel arrived on the scene of a similar large-scale attack, they would serve little purpose.

“If something happens in Los Angeles, the city Fire Department, the county Fire Department, the Orange County Fire Department are all going to have to roll out the door and handle it. They can’t wait until somebody comes from Washington, D.C.,” said John M. Eversole, chairman of a National Fire Protection Assn. committee that sets national guidelines for hazmat competency. “Where the real life-saving is going to be done is in that first hour.”

As a result, the federal government, recognizing the importance of hazmat crews and other “first responders,” steered resources to help train and equip local agencies. Under a Defense Department initiative in 120 major cities--later expanded to 156--specialists were dispatched to train local firefighters, paramedics and others in how to deal with chemical and biological agents.

“We’re the guys that are going to be there first,” said Jim O’Connor of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s hazmat team. “They’ll take at least 12 hours to get the NBC [nuclear, biological, or chemical] warfare people or the Marines to us. They’re not first responders. This is the first responders.”

A Rolling Library and Chemistry Lab

Chemical and biological terrorism is now a staple of hazmat training, from recognizing the signs of a chemical or biological attack to such morbidly named tasks as “mass casualty management.”

A countywide committee also has been convened, and a full-time anti-terrorism coordinator has been appointed by the county fire department.

Fortunately, terrorist attack readiness has never been put to the test. Or has it?

“I can’t tell you specifics, but yes, we had a few potential [attacks],” said Anaheim’s Ivison.

While terrorism has assumed a higher profile in recent years, hazmat teams continue to spend most of their time attending to such routine, though still potentially catastrophic, matters as leaking trucks and abandoned drums.

Units operate a hazmat vehicle, or “squad,” which resembles an all-enclosed standard red fire engine. A duel-function vehicle which is also used to take non-hazmat personnel to fires, the squad houses a small library of chemical reference materials, as well as a cell phone, fax machine and computer with access to chemical databases. Firefighters can also utilize modeling software that can project the size and direction of a plume of smoke.

When the chemical in question isn’t immediately identifiable, hazmat entry teams can radio whatever information they gather to referencing personnel in the squad. There is little room for error, which is why state guidelines call for at least three references on any chemical. “First you have to know how to spell the thing,” Barnhart said. “One ‘ate’ or ‘ite’ can make a difference.”

Hazmat crews also must be familiar with an array of sophisticated monitoring equipment, including an infrared camera which can be used to determine the radioactivity, corrosiveness and flammability of suspect chemicals.

Depending on what they’re up against, hazmat members may have to climb into “level A” protective suits, which are fully sealed orange outfits. (Level B “splash” suits are hooded but don’t provide full body protection.) Made of butyl rubber on the inside and plastic-like Viton on the outside, level A suits run about $4,000 apiece. A self-contained breathing apparatus provides up to an hour’s worth of fresh air.

Even using the requisite buddy system, getting completely dressed can take as long as 45 minutes. Once the suit is on, the humidity level doubles within five to seven minutes. Hand-eye coordination is severely impaired.

Manual dexterity? Try picking something up wearing three layers of gloves.

“Your ability to do your job drops 50% as soon as you get in that suit,” O’Connor said. “You have to be very tolerant of being in an enclosed environment that you cannot get yourself out of.”

There also are visibility issues, said Gerald Schorr, a captain with the Orange County Fire Authority and 10-year hazmat veteran. “You have two layers inside. You’re wearing a mask that’s hooked up to respirator and, over it, a suit with a plastic opening covered with material that’s resistant to chemical. Between the two of them, things fog up.”

Throw in the fatigue factor and an often acute loss of water, and the suit itself may pose a greater danger than the chemicals it’s supposed to protect against. As a result, time spent in the suit is tracked by stopwatch, and hazmat members often tap out after 20 minutes.

“It’s a good weight-loss program,” Schorr said. “You can lose five to seven pounds after 30 minutes of that. Unfortunately, it all comes back.”

“You really can’t define the experience until you get in that suit,” said Barnhart of Los Angeles City Fire. “Your heart [rate] and blood pressure go up and you’re sweating like a pig. And you’re in an area where you know, ‘If I wasn’t in this suit, I’d be dead.’ You have to have a lot of confidence in your equipment.”

Their job has been made smoother in recent years, thanks to public awareness and outreach programs that have cut down on illegal dumping, and state measures like the 1996 so-called Unified Program, which pulled together a number of regulatory packages, resulting in more consistent management of California’s hazardous materials.

That program, for example, helped streamline the inventory process whereby agencies collect data on local businesses that handle hazardous materials. In case of an incident, that information can quickly be relayed to response teams via emergency dispatchers.

But hazmat’s painstaking process represents a major shift in gears for firefighters who are used to operating at one speed: go. “You have to understand firefighters. When we see a fire, we go hard. We go strong. We want to get in there and knock it down,” O’Connor said. “Hazmat is a totally different animal. [It’s] a slow, methodical approach.”