CBRNeWORLD


of the Nashville Fire Department (FD). Like many US cities, Nashville has been through various cycles of investment, and while it is approaching a time of increase due to the surge in population it has learned to ‘play well with others’ when things have not been so rosy. Indeed the Nashville region can lay


claim, along with Jacksonville and Houston, to having the first professional hazmat teams in the US. Michael Armistead explained their legacy: “Through the 1950s and 60s there was no Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and there were no safety regulations in government. In the 1970s people started getting more conscious about the environment etc, and out west we had the Waverley train derailment and propane explosion that wiped out the fire chief and a lot of first responders. Before there were any emergency management agencies there was civil defence, so the civil defence chief and the governor got together and said we need to come up with something to address this so it doesn’t happen again. There was no curriculum, no support or layout, up until this moment. “Their civil defence guy got together with Dr Kramer from Vanderbilt


University, and Dr Woods from David Lipscomb University, and they got together with Fire Captain Harry White. Harry was in touch with Bill Hand in Houston, and Ron Gore in Jacksonville, and they would all talk about emerging trends, what this department was doing versus that department and were working together developing strategy and tactics. Bill came from a petrochemical and oil refinery background in Houston and Ron had all the coastal stuff in Jacksonville. While people were already doing hazmat stuff it was like the wild west, there was no set standard for what you do. They got these professors together and asked how they would map out a course and built the programme. Harry in conversation with Ron spoke about the work with the professors here in Nashville and that we were going to deliver this course, so I think Ron sent 15 of his hazmat guys through the two week course, and got on the phone with his chief and said: I’m paraphrasing ‘This is it! This is a bonafide thing.’ They went back and stood up the first hazmat company with a curriculum in the nation: Jacksonville was first, and we were second. Even though we did the course their fire department stood up a week faster than Nashville, and then


Houston was third. The rest blossomed from that.” Touring through the meters in the


firehouse it becomes apparent that most of them are chemical with radiological close behind. The team admitted that this was the case, and accurately represents the everyday threats they face. Nashville tends to deal with threats collectively, with law enforcement and fire pooling resources to deal with them. “It’s a joint effort,” Michael Armistead explained. “We don’t work with health so much, but police and fire and the state work together as a unit. We all fall under the the Fifth District umbrella, we work well with the Department of Energy and the civil support team (CST) and when we work with those people there is no lead agency. If it is a fentanyl lab we would provide the decon part while the police department (PD) does the processing, but we work as a team and are involved in the planning.” Any firefighter who has tried to


access PD intelligence briefings knows how difficult it is to get involved in the planning of missions. Usually fire hazmat is tasked at short notice to attend a scene, and is briefed then and


Hazmat’s roots in the US are shallower than you might think… but they begin in Nashville ©NFD


www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018


February 2018 CBRNe WORLD


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