Formed in 1980, Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland County Hazardous Materials Response Team 800 grew from an initial 15 volunteer members to 70 members today. Still volunteers, the members belong to fire, EMS and law enforcement agencies across the county and respond to both hazmat and RIT calls.
Recently, Team 800 and firefighters from other departments conducted decontamination refresher training under Instructor J. Leer.
The team also took part in the new WCCC PSTC registration process and deployed training with the HazSim Hazmat Training System. They used HazSim to simulate several scenarios including an auto shop, unknown vessel, and responder decontamination after an explosives call.
The enhanced training device recently obtained through a hazardous materials grant will be used and maintained by the team and can be deployed to any firefighter training to bring real life hazmat scenarios to a new level.
Team 800 was also instructed by Scott Luciano of Specialty Response Systems, Inc. who provided valuable training on the devices. Read more about how Team 800 trains here.
