Rural MultiDept/County wide HazMat Training

[Adler]

I was wondering if any rural volunteer deparments or squads do a county wide or multi department HazMat Training sessions. Let me explain. In rural Iowa, we have some volunteer departments that are at operations level, but most are at Awareness Level. An idea has been brought up that would allow personnel from area EMS Squads, as well as Fire Depts, to be trained at the Technician's Level. I believe this is a great idea. But, I think I would need to impress the benefits of this plan to the area squads. I would like to see a each squad in the county and area send at least one man to a HazMat Technician's Course and then these individuals would be responsible for training together and would respond to any HazMat incident in the area, instead of having the mostly volunteer squads (awareness levels) respond. We have a HazMat team from Sioux City respond for the big stuff and they always bring their city's private ambulance company because of the paramedics. But, we also have medics in this county that would be willing to take over this role. Funding would not be a problem because the state of Iowa has grants up to $30k for system development and training. I would like to see somewhere around 8-10 EMT/Paramedics attend the Technician's course.

If anyone has done something similar to this please let me know. I would like to know protocols, SOP's, Training requirements, hurdles, roadblocks, etc. Thank you in advance.

Brad L. Meyer
Emergency Services Director
Hawarden, IA
bradm@cityofhawarden.com