Henderson firefighters train to become hazmat response team

Henderson firefighters have spent the past six weeks training for worse-case scenarios with the hope of never having to use those skills.

Three battalion chiefs and 30 firefighters finished 120 hours of technical hazmat training Thursday that began in late May.

The training focused on hazardous materials and weapons of mass destruction response and decontamination, as well as detection of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear items and explosives.

The team is scheduled to be operational later this year.

“They’re trained to go in and mitigate the problem,” said Shawn White, Henderson’s deputy fire chief in charge of operations. “If you’ve got a leaking pipe, container or transportation vehicle, they’re trained with how to deal with those problems by stopping the leak.”

The $200,000 training was funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which paid for the firefighters’ salaries to attend the class and equipment needed for the unit.

The firefighters came from the city’s current staff, and no new personnel were hired for the unit, according to White.

The training was conducted by Kerry Mackey, a hazmat training officer at the Nevada Test Site.

Henderson firefighter/paramedic Chad Engel said having the city’s own hazmat team will allow the department to work in unity on hazardous calls.

“Keeping this all in-house where we can train together allows you to prepare for the worse case,” said Engel, who has been with the department since 2001. “So when you do get something thrown at you, everyone’s on the same page on what you’ve got to end up doing.”

Some of the Henderson hazmat team will go for additional training in Reno or Alabama, which will be paid for by state and federal grants, not through city funds.

The main reason for developing the hazardous-material team training is twofold: the Black Mountain Industrial Complex is on a county island inside Henderson, and Clark County Fire Department eliminated its hazmat unit during budget cuts about four years ago.

Without Clark County fire, the closest hazmat unit is the Las Vegas Fire Department, which is about 45 minutes away from Black Mountain.

The nearly 700-acre industrial complex, near the northeast corner of U.S. Highway 95 and Lake Mead Parkway, is home to companies using materials that are potentially hazardous if they get out into the environment.

The firefighters come from Station 98 near Coronado High School, a 10-minute response time to the Black Mountain site.

White said there is a city fire station closer to the Black Mountain, but a large chemical accident could compromise that station, making it unable to respond.

The specially trained firefighters will continue with their regular duties but will be the city’s hazmat unit in case of emergencies.

The site includes the Anadarko Petroleum Corp. plant, which uses manganese oxide; Titanium Metals Corp., or TIMET, which produces titanium jet engine parts; and Olin Chemical, which operates a chlor-alkali plant.

The site is less than two miles from the old PEPCON plant, which produced ammonium perchlorate before its explosion on May 4, 1988.

Thatcher Chemical, a producer of industrial chemicals that sits on city land west of U.S. 95 on Lake Mead Parkway, is also a potential area of concern, White said.

While the training will give Henderson a first-response hazmat unit, the unit might be lightly used. The last time an outside hazmat team was in the city was July 2013 for a titanium fire at TIMET, according to Fire Department spokeswoman Kathleen Richards.

“They’ve responded to other incidents over the last couple years as a precaution but ended up being canceled before arriving or not being used,” Richards said.

The training was not only for possible responses to Black Mountain. Henderson has two federal highways that are used for carrying hazardous materials through the city, and could have a third in the next 20 years.

U.S Highway 95 runs from Railroad Pass through the east side of the city, while the 215 Beltway runs along the central part of Henderson including the densely populated Green Valley area.

The proposed Interstate 11, which could run along the current U.S. 95 corridor or a newly built interstate farther east, could open the city to more hazardous waste transportation if it gets built.

But it is not just the highways that carry hazardous materials. Union Pacific has a rail line that runs from the Black Mountain and Thatcher plants west through Henderson, over the Pittman Wash near Arroyo Grande Park, crossing Green Valley Parkway and Sunset Park on Eastern Avenue before continuing on past McCarran International Airport and connecting with the north-south line west of Interstate 15.

While the recent training was for technical response for securing and containing an area, the city firefighters receive regular training on hazmat awareness — identifying chemicals and knowing when to call for support — and operations, which includes victim rescue.

The long-term goal for the specialized unit is to become a regional response team that could answer calls all over the Las Vegas Valley.

White said the county and Black Mountain operators have been supportive during the establishment of the hazmat team.

“It’s been encouraging that the whole valley’s embraced us,” White said. “They realize there’s a need for more than one hazmat team from across town to handle all this stuff.”

Contact Arnold M. Knightly at aknightly@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3882. Follow @KnightlyGrind on Twitter.