“Once we found out that these two chemicals were involved we knew exactly what we were going to do,” continued Hoflund, listing them off. “One: Put on our ONESuit hazmat protective gear. Two: Mitigate and venti- late the incident site.” Suiting Up, Going In Prior to entering the incident site, Hoflund and a colleague
put on their new ONESuit® Flash hazmat suits. Manufactured by Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, ONESuit Flash is a single-skin, flame-resistant chemical protective suit. That is certified to NFPA 1991 standards.
Hoflund and his partner encountered their first problem when the door to the storage facility was locked, forcing them to cut out the door with a reciprocating saw.
“That was first thing that I noticed about the ONESuit - it had very good maneuverability and it was easy to hold tools in my hand,” said Hoflund. “We hadn’t trained cut- ting doors off in a hazmat suit, but we quickly found that it was easy to move around in the ONESuit.”
“Once we gained entry, we discovered that certain areas of the room were difficult to move around in. With our old hazmat suits we were always worried about tearing. But the ONESuits are really flexible. In fact, I ran into a couple of things in the room but the suits were very durable,” Hoflund commented.
This was the first time that the Laramie Fire Department deployed the ONESuit Flash suits.
Hoflund and his partner sealed up the exposed hydrochlo- ric acid tank and proceeded to ventilate the small space with positive pressure fans. Using a chlorine monitor and pH paper they were able to determine when it was safe for civilians to reenter the room.
The citizens of Laramie were free to swim again. (The pool reopened the next day.) The two employees were released from a local hospital later that afternoon.
To prevent similar incidents from happening, John Poulos, Company Officer and Hazardous Materials Coordinator at the Laramie Fire Dept offers his advice, “Marking each drum and the appropriate receiving containers with large, color-coded labels will clearly remind staff of chemical contents inside. Prevention is the ultimate cure for any hazmat inci- dent.”
Why ONESuit Flash? “Our old hazmat suits were approaching the end of their shelf life and our distributor, Wise Safety, rec- ommended we try a new suit on the market,” said Poulos.
“He brought them for the team to try on and the main reason we liked them so much was because of the flexibility and softness of fabric. They were also extremely lightweight. While our old suits were also Level A and single-skin, they didn’t meet the flash fire requirement. They were also much heavier, not nearly as flexible, and nowhere near as soft,” said Poulos, a 25-year department veteran.
Poulos noted that with ONESuit Flash there is no cur- rent shelf life. “You just have to do an annual recerti- fication test: Pressurize the suits to four inches of water pressure and examine the exhaust valves. As long as they’re intact and serviceable, you can keep using it. We haven’t had a ONESuit fail yet.”
“We receive funding every year from the State Homeland Security Grant Program (federal funding) and we like to be good stewards with that money,” said Poulos. “We do a lot of comparisons and the safety issue is of course paramount. ONESuit Flash was the best fit in terms of cost and capabilities.”
The Laramie Fire Department has 12 hazmat suits in its arsenal. In the meantime, jump on in…the water’s great.
Continued from page 12
ONESuit Chemical Protective Suit Helps Laramie, Wyoming Fire
Department Safely Handle Hazardous Incident
Prepared for Anything “We got the call that two people had been exposed to chlo- rine gas at the Rec Center,” recalled Jim Hoflund, a Laramie Fire Department company officer. “When we arrived on scene, we had personnel who were checking on the victims in the ambulance — so that was under control. Since the immediate life/safety issues were okay, we had to figure out how to mitigate the incident.”
While the Laramie Fire Department serves a relatively small community (population 31,000), it is particularly well prepared for the unique challenges of a major hazmat operation; the surrounding public is in very good hands.
Some background: The State of Wyoming Department of Homeland Security divides Wyoming into seven different regions. Laramie is in Region 3, which includes Albany and Carbon counties, and the Laramie Fire Department provides hazmat response in this region. The Laramie Fire Department also features 20 firefighters (out of 43 total) who have achieved the highest National Fire Protection Association Hazmat Certification – the Technical Level - requiring a minimum 80 hours of spe- cialized training. Many have received additional advanced training at the American Railroad Institute School in Pueblo, Colorado.
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