Responding to a Hazmat Event with Minimal Resources:

Anderson County, Kansas has a population of just under 8000 residents. It’s emergency services, like many across the country are largely staffed by volunteers and lack the resources of larger metropolitan departments. Despite this, the county still must contend with many high hazard industries and high hazard vehicles on its roads and railroads. This reduced capacity, combined with the potential impact of an incident was recently put to the test when CHEMTREC’s Crisis Solutions team ran a live exercise scenario in Garnett, Anderson County.

The live exercise simulated a collision between a truck carrying chlorine cylinders from a local plant, and 2 cars on Interstate 169. With specialist HAZMAT support over 2 hours away, the local fire department, EMS, and hospital worked together to size up the scene, make it as safe as possible, rescue people, decontaminate the site, treat casualties and deal with the wider impacts of the incident including a major transportation disruption. The team also activated specialist capabilities from the county level and activated CHLOREP via CHEMTREC (see box for description).

Watching the team respond, Exercise Director, Chris Scott from CHEMTREC commented “... we have had the pleasure of working with some of the world’s largest, and busiest fire departments, with almost unlimited resources, and there is no way they could have undertaken such an effective response with the resources the Anderson County teams had at their disposal. I am in awe of the bravery and skill of these men and women who responded effectively to safeguard people and the environment, despite the limitations placed on them, they are a credit to their services and local community.”