Unit III Discussion Board Question
COLLAPSE
Hazardous materials come in various forms, as flammable or combustible materials, explosives, poisons, or radioactive materials. Hazards from these materials can occur during their production, storage, transportation, use, or disposal. If a major hazardous materials incident were to occur in your community, are the current level of emergency response services provided by your community, businesses, and the government adequate?
Discuss what programs are currently in place in your community. What actions do you believe are being taken or should be taken by your local emergency response agencies to prepare for such incidents?
As you respond to your classmates, review the information in their posts regarding the emergency services program currently in their communities. Is it comparable to what you have in your community? Is there an element that may be incorporated in your or their program? Share your responses.
In the Air Force community, we do have agencies that will deal with these types of situations. Agencies that typically deal with these types of situations are the fire department, bioenvironmental engineering, and HAZMART. However, the response portion will vary depending on if there is a fire or not. Usually, the fire department is the first on scene and will give bioenvironmental engineering a brief on the situation. Bioenvironmental engineering’s role in the situation is to provide health risk assessments after quantifying what is on the scene. After quantifying what is on the scene, they will provide this information to an incident commander, and they will have HAZMART remediate the situation. I believe these agencies are adequate to handle these situations. As for the actions being taken by our local emergency response agencies to prepare for such incidents, I believe they are taking the proper actions to deal with these situations since this is their primary responsibility.
