 This is ComNet. Major disasters in a community can overload the capabilities of responders. Stacy Phillips looks at the Citizen Corps, the different programs they offer, and how they'll be useful during an emergency. The Environmental Protection Agency offers training to personnel who are likely to be first on the scene of a terrorist incident. Jenny Dean looks at the EPA's comprehensive program for protecting the public and the environment from hazardous materials. Responders will rely on various types of mechanical equipment during an emergency. John Eastman meets with public works officials to talk about the role of heavy equipment during a terrorist incident. ComNet is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Office for Domestic Preparedness, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Coming to you from the facilities of the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute at the Southeastern Public Safety Institute of St. Petersburg College, here are Al Rochelle and Jennifer Holloway. Hello everyone and welcome to ComNet, the communications, news, equipment and training magazine. This program presents weapons of mass destruction related awareness information for the nation's civilian and military response communities. ComNet is being distributed over government and commercial information networks and is being streamed over the worldwide web at terrorism.sbcollege.edu. We invite you to visit the NTPI website for further details on the information provided during today's program. Continuing education units can be earned for viewing ComNet programs. To register for those CEUs, go to the NTPI website and click on the Continuing Education Units link under training. This link will take you through the registration and login process. Now after you log in, you'll be able to view program videos, take the program exam and fill out an evaluation form. With an exam grade of 75% or better, you will immediately receive an online CEU certificate. After viewing ComNet, please complete a viewer evaluation of the program because your input and comments are very important to us. Major disasters in a community can overload the capability of first responders, especially during the first 12 to 72 hours of the response. Stacy Phillips looks at the Citizen Corps, the different programs they offer and how they will be useful during an incident. Statistics tell us there is one firefighter for every 280 people. One sworn officer for every 385 people and one EMT or paramedic for every 325 people. Clearly, there are not enough first responders out there to take care of every person involved in a disaster or large-scale catastrophe. Citizen Corps, born out of the tremendous outpour of support that people gave to the 9-11 incident, is providing a way to relieve this burden on the first responder. Citizen Corps is a national program adopted by the states to provide volunteer opportunities to the citizens to make a difference in homeland security, emergency preparedness, and be a difference to first responders to assist them in their times of need. The three things that we're really trying to push with Citizen Corps is that everyone has some type of personal responsibility to be prepared that they should take some type of training in order to help them be prepared whether it's the cert training or first aid training that's offered by Red Cross or one of our many other partners just so they know what to do in types of an emergency and then also to give back through some type of volunteer effort. Having citizens who are better prepared to take care of themselves and others during times of crisis will allow first responders to focus their efforts on the most critical life-threatening situations. The more people that we can train in the basic life-saving techniques that are essential to them in those first critical hours of a disaster, it will be more beneficial to those individuals, to the community in general, and to the first responders specifically. If you don't take the steps early on with preparing yourself, having first aid supplies, water supplies and disaster times, it's going to be a long time before help can get there if a major disaster occurs. We are really changing the culture. We are saying with Citizen Corps, it is no longer a viable option to say that first responders are going to do it all and that preparedness is something they do to the constituents of their community. I really want to reiterate that Citizen Corps and getting people trained and prepared and getting the volunteers in a local community geared up is in no way ever meant to supplant the wonderful, tremendous work that is done by the professional emergency responders. Citizen Corps is a national network of state, local and tribal Citizen Corps councils, which bring together leaders from the relevant sectors of the community to coordinate the Citizen Corps effort. Councils are primarily the elected officials of the municipality, the community leaders from the various civic groups or other organizations that are active in the community. All of those logical people, the chief of police, the fire chief, the emergency management coordinator, the public works officials, the mayors, the church leaders and the civic organizations, the news media. All of those people would logically have a representation on the Citizen Corps council. So your first step is to create a council that reflects the needs, the threats and the risks of your community. And then you take the council and the council then helps you at the local level. They help the local leaders say, this is what we need to do. We at the state level want to promote the use of volunteers during disasters. It's a critical role that they play. It's a role that has been proven. And more and more we're seeing local emergency management and even state emergency management being able to do things today that we were never able to do because we have volunteers that are able and ready to assist us. We can go to as recent as our 2004 hurricane season, which was the largest voluntary agency activation in the history of natural disasters. When we had over 140,000 volunteers in our state, this is a feat that is unparalleled. There are people that have suffered and weathered a tremendous storm and have literally nothing. And then there are volunteers that are coming there to help to offer emergency needs in terms of food and water and ice, but then also to help them rebuild their homes, to help them get back to a state that they were as close as possible before storms impacted. The purpose of the Citizen Corps Councils is to develop methods for providing public education and training opportunities in addition to organizing volunteer programs. One way to accomplish this is through affiliates and program partners. We currently have 22 affiliate organizations and an affiliate organization is primarily a non-profit or another government organization that is national in scope and that could provide resources to the state and local level to advance the mission of hometown and homeland security. For example, we work very closely with the Red Cross. The Red Cross has been there a lot longer than we have. They have tremendous resources. Many of our local councils have actually turned to their Red Cross chapter and asked the Red Cross chapter to run their Citizen Corps Council. Red Cross, as part of their overall Citizen Corps effort, they were actually conducting disaster preparedness courses for the hearing impaired. We encourage that type of partnership. There are right now, there are five Citizen Corps programs. The Community Emergency Response Teams, or CERT, the Medical Reserve Corps, the Neighborhood Watch Program, the Volunteers in Police Services, and a newly indoctrinated program called the FIRE Corps, which was just announced in December of 2004. One of the Citizen Corps' program partners, the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, educates people about disaster preparedness and trains them in basic disaster response skills. Using their training, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event and can take a more active role in preparing their community. Another program partner, the Medical Reserve Corps, is made up of medical and public health professionals and other volunteers who offer their expertise throughout the year, as well as during local emergencies and other times of community need. MRC volunteers work in coordination with existing local emergency response programs and also supplement existing community public health initiatives. An expanded Neighborhood Watch Program incorporates terrorism awareness education into its existing crime prevention mission. It also serves as a way to bring residents together to focus on emergency preparedness and emergency response training. Volunteers in Police Service, or VIPS, is a program partner that works to enhance the capacity of state and local law enforcement to utilize volunteers. VIPS also serves as a gateway to resources and information about law enforcement volunteer programs. The newest program partner, FIRE Corps, creates a connection between the fire department and the community. It provides a vehicle for citizens to find out which fire departments in their area are looking for help and provides resources to create and sustain FIRE Corps programs in their community. Citizens can assist local fire departments in different areas, such as fire safety outreach, youth programs, and administrative support. We started FIRE Corps in response to the fire community coming to us and saying there really is not a program that's under the Citizen Corps umbrella that really speaks directly to the fire community. We are very excited and in less than two months, they have over 150 fire departments that have signed up online to become part of FIRE Corps around over 2,000 volunteers that have been reported in just two months. All of these programs have wonderful websites and the way that anyone who is watching can get their community registered is to go to the websites and register their programs. You do not need to create a new organization to start Citizen Corps. There may be an existing group in your community that includes many of the appropriate participants. For example, a local emergency planning committee could take the lead in implementing Citizen Corps in your area. You can actually subscribe and register your Citizen Corps Council online. We encourage everyone to go to the website. The easy portal is www.citizencorps.gov. It will take you to all the other sites. We list all the other sites to numerous to mention here, but we've made it very easy to register and we are encouraging people to register their programs. The process again, it takes literally two minutes to sign up on the web. You must state who your sponsor is and it must be someone in local government, elected official. Then we send that over electronically to the state. The state point of contact is actually the one who vets the council and once they check off the box, it goes up automatically on the website and you could see where all the councils are because it's updated on the website. I think the thing to remember is that America is a very big country and it's a country with people who have a lot of skills and they want to know how to be better prepared and our goal is if we can get one neighborhood at a time to be better prepared, then communities are better prepared and then the state and then the country is better prepared so we think everyone has a role in hometown security. We live in a different world than we did before 9-11. Today, citizens are more aware of the threats we are faced with, more thankful for our freedoms and more understanding that they have a personal responsibility for the safety of their communities and the nation. With Citizen Corps, people are better prepared to protect themselves. They can help reduce the impact an emergency has on their lives and also help the first responder in those critical first hours. Coming up, we'll take a closer look at one of the Citizen Corps program partners, the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Developed by the Secretary of Homeland Security at the request of the President, the National Incident Management System integrates effective practices in emergency preparedness and response into a comprehensive framework for incident management. On the next live response, we'll look at the National Incident Management System and see how it can enable responders to work together more efficiently. Live response airs Wednesday, March 23 at 2 p.m. Eastern. For more information on viewing, make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. When emergencies happen, Community Emergency Response Team members will be able to provide critical support to responders. Stacey Phillips continues her look at the Citizen Corps and focuses on the CERT program. In the event of an emergency, a disaster, your local resources, fire, EMS, police can be overwhelmed. People at home, they see a disaster on TV and they often want to help. Most of them write a check. Some of them want to get physically involved, but may not have the time to, you know, to donate to the training it would take to become a fireman or an EMT or a police officer. CERT is a condensed program that allows the average person enough information and enough basic training to be able to pick up some of the loose ends and take up some of the slack when your town's services are overwhelmed. Following a major disaster, first responders who provide fire and medical services will not be able to meet the demand for these services. One way the Citizen Corps can be used to address this need is through the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. The Community Emergency Response Team concept was developed by the Los Angeles City Fire Department in 1985 with the purpose of training citizens for disasters. The Emergency Management Institute and the National Fire Academy adopted the concept and expanded the CERT training. The Community Emergency Response Teams are intent on building a group of citizens into an organized response team that can assist in a disaster. If there is a disaster, people already have a good proclivity to come out and to volunteer and to want to help. The problem that government officials have is we don't know who these people are, we don't know what skills they have, and we don't know how they can assist. So if they're not an organized resource that we have dealt with and helped to train and identify, then their value is somewhat limited and inhibited to the emergency and disaster scene. Everyone that shows up at the scene wants to help. But when people do that as a spontaneous type responder, in reality they may become more of the problem than the solution. The CERT program educates citizens about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their neighborhoods and trains them in basic disaster response skills. As the CERT concept has taken hold across the country, it has become much more than originally envisioned. CERT members have proven themselves to be an active and vital part of their communities preparedness and response capability. The community itself benefits greatly. One, it ties all those neighbors together who may not have known each other other than seeing each other in the morning as they drive out of the neighborhood. People get to know each other's names and what their capabilities are and what the community actually has and what they can do if something were to happen within their neighborhood. CERT members undergo eight weeks or 20 hours of training that includes disaster preparedness, fire suppression, search and rescue, basic medical operations and terrorism awareness. We usually start off the students with a representative from emergency management. It tells them about tornadoes and hurricanes, etc. So they get a little idea about weather and just exactly what to do, how to prepare your homes and yourself prior to a storm approaching. Then we have two weeks of medical operations or medical ops. You're taught basic first aid. How to quickly triage a person. What does triage mean? Pressure points. How can you put a 4x4 bandage on just to hold the pressure on so the bleeding stops? Then we have our fire marshal who teaches about fire suppression and hazards out in the real world and in the home. What are these placards on these trucks that we see on our highways all the time? How to properly use a fire extinguisher or not use a fire extinguisher. If you have a fully involved home, you want to call 911. What we teach in terrorism awareness is a couple things. First of all, we always stress to the CERT teams because they're not going to be equipped. They don't go into a terrorist event. It's like a stop sign to them. But what we stress to them is the types of terrorist weapons that are being used. We give them a little insight into each of these weapons and we teach them what to look for as far as when a terrorist event has occurred. The environmental factors, the physical factors you're going to see and what to do. We try to stress to them to time, distance and shielding. Get far away from the incident as you can and shield yourself from any type of terrorist event. It's important for them to know when to not do anything and that it's important and just as important to not do anything. By standing back and watching a situation and just absorbing information, they can then turn around to the incident commander whether it be fire, police, EMS, whoever gets there on scene first, they can relate to them what's going on. The training also includes a disaster exercise in which participants practice the skills they learn throughout the course. Periodic refresher sessions are also an important part of the training and help keep members up to date with their skills. The hard part as with working with any volunteer organization is the retention then and keeping their interests. So we try to bring people back up for a cert research as it were to bring them up and show them a new technique, something new that they can do, whether it be simple knots that they can work with to different tools they might be able to use if they had them available to them. Community emergency response teams require a public and private partnership and will be an investment of a community's time and resources. To capitalize on this investment, responders should view cert members as a trained volunteer resource that can assist their neighborhoods or even their workplaces with safety activities. We emphasize that cert team members should come from the community so that they are available in their community for a local disaster. Here in New Jersey, we have organized our state workers into state workplace-based community emergency response teams. And the training is standardized throughout the state so that if they are trained in cert in the workplace, they are equally trained and capable of joining or becoming the nucleus to start a cert team in their hometown community. So there's a double benefit there. They're a workplace-related cert and a home-based cert. What they're doing is they're allowing us time to really do things we need to do and focus on the patients that truly need us. They could do those tasks where they could secure a perimeter. They could do triage for us. So now when we get there, they've already triaged a group of people so we can now focus our attention on the immediate people that need immediate treatment. The primary reason for cert training is to give people the skills to offer immediate assistance to family members, neighbors, and associates while waiting for help. If there was an area that perhaps first responders would not get to, that if it was a large-scale disaster that impacted more than one community or perhaps the eastern coast, all of the emergency responders would be overwhelmed and who would be first and who would be last in line? Would you like to be the last person waiting for the emergency response team or the EMT to come to you? If there were people in the community that knew those basic life-saving skills, they would certainly be a valuable resource. Congress has provided funds for local communities to start cert programs through the Citizen Corps. Some communities build the cost of cert training into their local budget while others charge participants to cover the costs of instructors and course materials. CERT is about readiness, people helping people and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. It is a positive and realistic approach to emergency situations to be initially on their own and their actions can make a difference. I think the concept of CERT follows a national tradition. This country is based on volunteerism from early colonial times. Citizens came out and put their lives on the lines in times of emergencies in military situations. Taking that down to today, it's still following that tradition and you don't have to be immensely physically fit. We have a number of people in our group who actually have disabilities and there's many many things that you can do to contribute. If we can get people organized and identified and trained so that they are ready and able to respond in that organized fashion they will become a tremendous asset to the community. The enforcement, the fire and the medical people will be familiar with them will know what their skill sets are specifically what they can do to help what they can be called upon to do and how to best utilize those people in an emergency situation. Over the next two years the CERT program aims to double the number of participants with over 400,000 individuals completing the 20 plus hours of training. Now if you'd like to be a part of CERT and if you'd like more information on any of the Citizen Corps programs just visit the NTPI website. And now it's time for Responder News, Jen. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the completion of the National Response Plan or NRP. This plan was developed by experts from all around the nation with input from all levels of the response community. It uses the National Incident Management System which simplifies multi-jurisdictional interaction. This is achieved by establishing standardized training, organizational structure and communication procedures. After full implementation response agencies will be able to integrate the federal response to catastrophic events, facilitate emergency mutual aid and improve their coordination and integration with other agencies. The NRP also gives private and non-profit institutions a detailed template for planning their own preparedness activities. The transition to the National Response Plan will not happen instantaneously or without support. To help fine-tune the process, Michael D. Brown, who serves as the Under-Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response announced the launch of IS-800. This independent study course available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Management Institute should aid those responsible in implementing the NRP. The new training course is designed to introduce emergency management practitioners to the National Response Plan. Upon completion, participants should be able to identify the organizational structure used for coordination, describe the NRP's purpose, locate information within the NRP and identify the incident management activities addressed by the NRP. California researchers have developed a new weapon for against terrorism. The Autonomous Pathogen Detection System or APDS is capable of detecting and identifying three different types of biological agents. This biological smoke detector tests the air for unsafe bacteria, viruses and toxins. It is the only field system that has two independent molecular biological tests which reduces the probability of false positives. The system provides sufficient evidence to trigger public health actions and is capable of detecting anthrax, plague and botulinum toxin. Tested at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the APDS performs the same test as molecular biologists which will help protect high-traffic areas like airports, office buildings and sports arenas from potential bioterrorist attacks. With thousands of people passing through their doors daily these structures are prime targets for terrorists. Thanks to the APDS the authorities can detect contaminants earlier which will limit exposure and reduce the number of victims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has launched a $6.7 million truck program to improve the response capabilities of its disaster medical assistance teams. These trucks will help them respond to disasters within 12 hours. A total of 93 trucks will be delivered to 31 different DMATs over the next year. They will be used to haul field supplies and medical equipment. The first truck was delivered to a DMAT team from San Bernardino, California after being built at an assembly plant in Three Rivers, Texas. The Center for Ocean Technology at University of South Florida's College of Marine Science has developed a sonar-based anti-terrorism device that produces three-dimensional color images. The mobile inspection package or MIP was most recently used as part of Jacksonville Sheriff's Office efforts to maintain Jacksonville's port security during Super Bowl 39. The MIP consists of a suite of sonar detectors combined with a survey quality navigation system that allows the data to be geodynamically referenced. That data recorded on board the RV Gilbert was sent in real time to the MIP Command and Control Center on board the Suncoaster Research Vessel. After a baseline view was established during the initial scanning of the vehicles and cruise ships in the St. John's River, changes could be immediately detected during the subsequent scans. Daily targets were scanned for suspicious features. These targets were further inspected by a fully automatic underwater robot called the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle or AUV. The AUV and the MIP are capable of scanning 3,000 linear feet in 10 minutes, whereas a team of divers would need hours to do the same job. The Nevada Hospital Association successfully completed the nation's first civilian test of the portable hospital structures initially used by the military. The freestanding hospital called a Disaster Medical Facility greatly increases Nevada's ability to manage the surges in demand for hospital care that often accompanies natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The 50 Bed Facility was designed and is modeled after the Rapid Response Field Hospitals currently being used by the U.S. military in the war in Iraq. The civilian models are fully operational within 24 hours of an event and can remain functional for the duration of an incident. The Disaster Medical Facility is completely self-sufficient and equipped to support advanced level medical care like surgeries and trauma services. Their capabilities also include intensive care units and isolation and treatment of patients exposed to biological agents. The Department of Homeland Security's congressionally mandated National Counterterrorism Exercise series known as Top Off began with January's Advanced Distance Learning Exercise. ADLE is comprised of videos from the training library of the Office for Domestic Preparedness, the Top Off 3 Command and Control Seminar, and distance learning programs at the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute. ADLE provided preparation for the Top Off 3 full-scale national exercise that will take place in April, 2005. Our partners in Top Off 3 are the State of New Jersey, the State of Connecticut, the United Kingdom, Canada and the private sector. I cannot speak highly enough or give enough praise to those cities and states and local communities that take this on. It takes a lot of guts for a politician to step forth and say, look, I'm going to take the way I do business, the way we do business, and we're going to open it up for all the world to see knowing, knowing that when this is over we're going to be so much better as a community, we're going to be so much better as a city, we're going to be so much better as a state, and we're going to be so much better as a nation because of the efforts that we're putting forth here. The archives of the training are available on the Lessons Learned Information Sharing website through the completion of the Top Off 3 exercise. The National Terrorism Preparantist Institute of St. Petersburg College held a symposium entitled Dealing with the Psychological Aftermath of Terrorism. It was held in January. That seminar, sponsored by the Office of Domestic Preparedness, was free to first responders. Including Oklahoma City Fire Department Major Chris Fields, who responded to the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The firefighters are used to arriving on the scene that's out of control, getting under control and going back to the station, and that didn't happen. So I think that was a little bit of a effect of the psyche of some of some firemen. There's quite a few that had suffered some bad effects from it, and I believe it's just because they probably didn't have an outlet, you know, whether they didn't want to open up at the station, you know, most firemen you have to keep that macho image, you know, can't let the walls down and which a lot of them did on this, which I think helped a bunch of them, but there was a few you know, personal friends of mine that struggled through it. The Environmental Protection Agency offers training to personnel who are likely to be first on the scene of a terrorist incident. Comnet visited the EPA's Environmental Response Training Program to find out more about their training for protecting the public and the environment from hazardous materials. In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, also known as Super Fund. This was in direct response to the events in Love Canal, New York. Suddenly, hazardous waste was at the forefront of the nation's conscience. 21 years later, the 9-11 tragedy brought the EPA back into the limelight with terrorism rapidly becoming a new reality. The brave men and women who deal with hazardous waste must put their own health and safety first in order to do their job. And there is a training program that enables them to learn how to protect not only the community, but themselves as well. The Environmental Response Training Program has the responsibility for training the Super Fund community on how to respond to hazardous waste and hazardous materials releases. The training program started back in the late 1970s when the Super Fund program was initiated. And EPA as they were developing expertise in remediating Super Fund sites wanted to get that expertise out to other federal responders and to state and local communities. Typically the courses are they could be for a college educated environmental scientist working for the EPA or the state organization who although has a technical background may not know the specifics of how to apply those technical skills onto a hazardous waste site. What we do is we provide training that most other federal and state local agencies can't because of the amount of equipment and supplies that are needed. We try to give them the tools necessary that if they had to respond to an emergency, an accident, a trained derailment, a spill that they would have the necessary tools and skill to adequately and properly mitigate that situation. The Emergency Response Training Program or ERTP has facilities in Cincinnati, Ohio, Edison, New Jersey and a new facility under construction in Las Vegas, Nevada. They have trained more than 7,000 students in 2003 including courses in Russia, Lithuania and Australia. The current schedule includes 136 offerings of 19 courses with a mobile training program that's able to travel throughout the country. The United States is divided up into 10 EPA regions and these courses that we do go around to at least each region once sometimes twice a year and so we try to have it set up that way that people that can sign up for it will make it cost effective that we don't just have two or three people in the class that we have 20 or 30, we've got a full class so by having the schedule and going in a certain schedule every year people know that we're going to be there and what classes we're going to teach when. We have the capability of taking the entire course, all the instrumentation all the health and safety equipment and actually deliver it on location to a state or a local community that needs our training. One of the courses offered by the ERTP is emergency response to hazardous material incidents. This course provides response personnel with the information needed to control the release or potential release of hazardous materials. It's intended for response personnel who are currently on or planning to join a hazardous materials response team. Some key points addressed in the course include recognizing and evaluating a hazardous materials incident organizing the response team protecting response personnel using response resources and protecting the public. The emergency response to hazardous materials incidents is a course designed to prepare people to be a hazardous materials technician. The course covers the health and safety aspects of entering into a release of hazardous chemicals. It informs the students about the proper selection of personal protective equipment and the use of air monitoring instruments and decontamination. It's a 40 hour course and it's designed to run the students through the necessary steps learning how to wear personal protective equipment, how to use air monitoring instruments properly, how to put on a self-contained breathing apparatus, how to use an air purifying respirator. Once that they've learned the basics then we start to give them labs and exercises to perform that training and we as the instructors give them a critique and say well this was done correctly you might want to do this a little better. Students at the ERTP not only learn in the classroom but also go out in the field to apply their acquired classroom knowledge in staged hazardous materials incidents. Health and safety are stressed in all courses and hands on experience includes the use of combustible gas detectors and oxygen meters and detectors. Our courses are designed to be hands on courses. We take the students we teach them the theory behind instruments but they actually get to use the instruments in the field. The students very much enjoy that aspect of the training course. That's a very important part of the training to actually to learn the skills necessary to work on site. We've found that the students if they have to sit for 8 hours they get kind of fidgety they lose concentration so by talking about what they're going to do and then actually having them do it that makes the day kind of more memorable. The first day they're in their street clothes they have the instruments they turn them on they have no gloves on. The second day when they learn about personal protective equipment and now they're actually going to have to use those instruments with different types of protective equipment so we make it a little bit more difficult. And then after we've talked about that maybe the third day we have them do some monitoring and not so much in a classroom but maybe a type of either outside where there's some drums or in an area where it's a little bit more difficult to take the readings so we try to use the same instruments but each time give them a little bit more difficult scenario to try to achieve. The environmental response training program is designed not only for the first responder community but for anyone with a technical background who may wish to apply their skills for the good of the community as well. We have a lot of state people like the state of Ohio they're EPA people in particular they're new high-ease they've been to college they've got a technical background in science in some way now they need to know the specifics of how to correctly do their job. In our emergency response course we do a lot of training for firefighters and they may be very well knowledgeable as far as fighting a fire but as far as handling chemicals and the right way to handle them the safety procedures that they need we try to give them the methods and the procedures to do it correctly. Because classes are generally full and the demand for training in the hazardous waste field is high the ERTP in cooperation with the EPA has developed the external provider program. The result is an increase in the number of training courses available to people who respond to hazardous materials emergencies. A good example of an external provider is a community college or perhaps a fire academy or a training consultant firm that has training does performs training in the environmental area. The external provider program was developed because our main focus is to train federal state and local government employees so that puts the private sector as forth on the list so if the classes fill up the private sector they do not get to take our courses. So in order to give them the same type of training what the EPA has done has looked for companies that do training that are competent. If the training institution has the right skills we will actually give them all the training materials the we'll give them the manuals the student manuals the overheads the entire training package that they can actually deliver to their own people on their own location. The training is provided free of cost for other federal organizations for state and local responders. The only cost associated with our training is for private companies. For those who are interested in training for the EPA or learning how to deal with hazardous waste materials but don't have the resources to attend the ERTP classes the organization has set up a virtual university more than 20 accredited courses are offered online free of charge. The virtual university is just another way the environmental resources training program helps responders help the community. If somebody says hey I've got an EPA certificate whether it's from us or external provider they know that they have gotten quality training that they should be competent enough to do their job correctly. The environmental response training program is an important resource for the response community. For more information on the ERTP and the courses it offers be sure and visit the NTPI website. Alright now let's take a look at various events happening around the country. On March 1st through 3rd the 2005 Homeland and Global Security Summit will be held in Washington DC at the Washington DC. Also on March 1st through 3rd the Emergency Medical Services is offering the operations and planning for weapons of mass destruction course at the California National Guard Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, California. Then on March 14th and 15th the 4th annual International Conference on Public Safety will be held in San Francisco, California at the Fairmont San Francisco Hotel and on March 21st through 24th the 44th annual Emergency Management Conference will be held at the Waco Convention Center in Waco, Texas. On March 21st through 25th the 4th annual Interoperability and Systems Integration Conference will be held in Norfolk, Virginia at the Waterside Marriott Hotel. Then on March 29th through 31st the Government Convention on Emerging Technologies will be held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. And on April 10th through 12th the 2005 American Water Works will be held at the Sheridan Oklahoma City Hotel. On April 13th and 14th the 19th annual Northeast Region Conference will be held in Massachusetts at the Boxborough Holiday Inn. Then on April 20th through 22nd Fire Rescue Med 2005 will be held at the Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. And on April 30th through May 4th the 2005 National Disaster Medical System Conference will be held in Orlando, Florida Incident managers rely on all types of equipment to perform essential tasks during a disaster. In this ComNet feature we'll discuss the use of heavy equipment as a resource during a WMD incident. ComNet correspondent John Eastman talks with public works officials in New York, Illinois and Washington D.C. about the role heavy equipment plays in disaster response and recovery preparedness. Public Works is capable of doing absolutely incredible things if we know about it in advance. If you come to us and kind of like the Army Corps give us a mission, we'll get it done for you. We're essential support services. We have among us thousands upon thousands really tens of thousands of trucks vehicles, staff and skill sets that can be essential in any type of emergency. Heavy equipment operators need to be familiar with the WMD Incident response plan and understand their role in that plan in providing skilled support persons. Participation by public works representatives in the emergency planning process can help in the overall operational recovery involving heavy equipment operators during a WMD event. So, what responsibility should public works personnel take on as a member of the Incident Response Team? We sat down with Christina Tanasichuk, senior manager of the American Public Works Association and discussed public works involvement in the Incident Response Planning process. Christina, when drafting a local emergency response plan why is it important to include public works? I think it's critical to include public works for many reasons. The first is that public works is often the department that has all the resources to assist in the response from the individuals that run your water treatment facility to the drinking water to the water that comes out of the hoses or the firemen to the actual equipment that is used in a disaster to the cleanup that takes place after the disaster and then to the mitigation so that we can make sure that a disaster like that is much much less likely to happen. Here in New York City public works involves tens of thousands of employees thousands of trucks and enormous resources, the responsibilities for our waste removal, our streets, our parks our water supply systems so you need to have public works involved in everything you're doing. Most responses to natural or man-made disasters do affect a component of public works. If not immediately in the response definitely they can be of assistance to the responding agencies without being able to be participant in the writing of the plan and their component of the plan it's much more difficult for them to come up to speed when an actual incident occurs. The types of heavy equipment needed during a WMD event most likely will be the same ones used in day-to-day public works operations. Public works should identify heavy equipment available to be utilized and the effectiveness of that equipment if a WMD incident should occur. We went to the streets of New York to talk to the city's Department of Sanitation Cleaning Operations Chief Buddy Sullivan. Chief you've got heavy equipment working here for snow removal but during a incident like 9-11 or other WMD events how would this equipment be used? Well in similar fashion it would be to remove any type of debris that might have occurred from the event. In 9-11 we worked the perimeter of the area removing the lighter debris away to our dump site and this equipment would be put to use in that nature in that fashion. It could be something as simple as bobcats or small backhose to as extensively as large cranes as we saw in situations such as Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center. You need to know what you have and also the types and specifications of what you have. That's very important for effective deployment. A dump truck is just not a dump truck. There are certain dump trucks that whether by age, by make or certain other types of trucks can be effective or cannot be effective. Certainly it's possible that you could need water trucks to imagine how water trucks could play some role in whether it's decontamination or other aspect of a WMD event. Heavy equipment public works personnel must be aware of standard operating procedures when entering a WMD or hazardous material site including the functions they will perform using their equipment, safety and special precautions, security and control procedures and evidence preservation. Heavy equipment operators should also report any pertinent information or suspicious activity at the scene to higher authorities. The heavy equipment is intrinsically involved in the actual search and rescue and then removing the debris as much of it as possible so that people have enough space to move. The fire department has enough space to get to the victims. One of the roles we find ourselves always playing when there are different types of events is just helping get people in supplies and materials around the city quickly. Potentially, the provision of water at the parks department we have a large fleet of water trucks and we certainly understand that depending on the type of WMD event we could be asked to utilize those trucks. How can the heavy equipment be used safely at a WMD incident? I think one of the first things that's important to recognize is that safety begins with someone who is very familiar with the equipment. They use it on a daily basis. They understand how the equipment works and the limitations of that equipment. If it is a radiological or biological contaminated site you would want some sort of device on the equipment to make sure that the employee was safe. We have 600 safety suits which would be used for kind of basic maintenance if we were asked to do maintenance that would be impacted by some type of WMD which are gas masks boots, gloves the parks department also has 25 of the more elaborate kind of chemical biological suits. Brian, what scene security and crowd control procedure should public works employees particularly heavy equipment operators be familiar with in a WMD event or hazardous material event? In some cases they may not even be aware that what they're actually going into officially is a WMD event that may take a little time to come out down the road so it's important that they keep that in the back of their mind as they move forward in an incident that there may be some other evidence gathering or other needs down the road that they need to be aware of as they move forward. Basically our instructions are pretty clear to our employees. Do not take anything. There are no souvenirs. You're not going there. There are no souvenirs. Generally public works needs to understand that like you said there would be a crime aspect and an evidentiary aspect to any of these events. The public works department definitely helps the police and fire maintain the integrity of the scene which is the first step. The second is working closely with fire and police to assure that whatever debris they've removed is okay to remove at that time in an area where they may help organize the sections of debris that is removed and then put so that it's managed well enough to know where that debris came from and what has been searched and what hasn't been searched, what can be removed and what should be left for the police to continue their investigation. Participation in training helps heavy equipment operators to identify and avoid WMD devices and follow appropriate procedures when a device is suspected. Operators must be able to recognize the characteristics and threats posed by potential WMD agents and follow organization procedures including decontamination protocols when responding to a potential WMD. When you involve radiological events like a dirty bomb or something where there would be contamination public works employees certainly need training on how to assess the situation how to make sure that they have the personal equipment they need to deal with the situation what type of perimeter needs to be set up what is a safe distance from the detonation or the event. We try and encourage every employee to report things that they see now that can be suspicious individuals that can be suspicious packages that can be just anything that's out of the ordinary that could cause a problem or that might be part of a larger plan that could be dangerous. Obviously employees going into that kind of an incident would require standard awareness training on hazardous materials as well as personal protective equipment requirements that might be required for that including standard safety and emergency requirements that they would face every day in their job as they go forward. Christina, what about the decontamination of public works equipment absolutely when the equipment goes into a scene when it comes out we have to be very vigilant about assuring that that equipment is decontaminated properly or decommissioned if it's out of commission after use for a WMD event. The kinds of heavy equipment called for and their mission during a disaster should be listed in the jurisdiction's comprehensive emergency management plan. It is important for public works to know the manner in which heavy equipment is covered in that plan. Also, heavy equipment operators and other public works personnel should have an awareness and understanding of their facility's continuity of services contingency plan. Ronnie, what way is heavy equipment covered in comprehensive emergency management plans? The flip answer would be it's under other duties as assigned specifically though it really would be part of the public works annex to an emergency response plan that would spell out what the roles and responsibilities of the department could be under given scenarios what the threat assessment would show and again it comes back to that cooperative effort between the people who are going to be probably leading that response and that investigation and the department itself to determine what role might they have and what can they expect to be called upon. Christina, what do public works personnel need to know about their roles in the public works facility's continuity of services contingency plan? They need to know that that plan exists and be trained on it and be sure that they know exactly what to do in the event that the plan needs to be called into action. I can't emphasize training and exercises enough. All of our departments and all of our people have to know what to do, when, who to report things to, and what role they would play in the contingency plan. It's very important that they understand what services are going to be continued. One of the things that really needs to be spelled out as part of the plan and as part of the policy with the cooperation of the elected officials is what services are critical to maintain and what services can be pulled back or eliminated during a response for continuity of operations during a response phase or a recovery phase. There's never enough preparation to know where the equipment is, where the certified operators are. If not everybody can drive a front-end loader or be certified to deliver fuel and we make sure that constantly during the year we are retraining new people, certifying additional people so that we can respond in a timely fashion. The missions that we've accomplished over the years if you look across all of the disasters that have happened in the United States are just incredible what the people in the public work sector have produced to support our uniformed brethren in our communities. On an everyday basis we do it at fire scenes and at accident scenes. We work together hand in hand. So I guess the more first responders and other responders include public works and learn about all of the capabilities they have, the response time can be cut down, the response can be more efficient and we can make sure we can save as many lives as possible. The use of heavy equipment is an important part of disaster response and recovery efforts. It is essential for public works personnel to recognize the characteristics and threats posed by a potential WMD agent and follow organizational procedures when responding to a potential WMD. For more information on any of the stories featured or agencies mentioned in this program visit our website or write to comnet. P.O. Box 13489 St. Petersburg, Florida 33733 and while you're on the NTPI website be sure and sign up and take the online test for CEUs. Also you can help ensure that we're meeting your learning needs in the evaluation form. And just a reminder that our next ComNet will air Wednesday, April the 27th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. And be sure to join us for live response on March the 23rd at 2 p.m. Eastern Time where we will discuss the National Incident Management System. Thanks again for viewing and we'll see you next time on ComNet.