Olympic-sized exercise

Delta Fire and Emergency Services got to test out its new Hazmat equipment Tuesday (Nov. 3) morning in a pre-Olympic disaster training exercise in Richmond.

A group of 26 members from Delta was tasked with decontaminating “victims” who had been exposed to harmful chemicals in a mock event at Steveston Secondary School which posed as an Olympic venue.

Paul Scholfield, a hazmat instructor with Delta said the scenario—called Exercise Gold, the third and final Olympic security exercise—had the crowd covered by snow from a snow blower that had been laced with a harmful chemical.

While Richmond firefighters handled the actual site at the fake Olympic venue to treat those affected—high school volunteers played the role of the crowd sprayed with the toxic snow—Delta’s contingent was sent to Richmond Hospital to decontaminate any overflow victims prior to being treated by the hospital’s staff.

Scholfield said Delta’s group erected a portable hot water shower tent in the hospital parking lot which is able to process up to 100 people an hour. They also screened the victims using equipment that detected chemicals as well as radioactivity. While only 18 victims were processed outside the hospital by Delta’s crew, Scholfield said it would be easy to see how a large scale emergency could grow quickly and begin to seriously tax the emergency personnel’s abilities.

“We could have handled a lot more people, but our training is so good that we felt we were well prepared,” Scholfield said.

Delta’s new Hazmat truck allows firefighters to manage a scene from a remote location while tapping into Internet-based communications to acquire information on building structures and chemicals. Firefighters equipped with voice and video communications, as well as a camera attached to a mast on the truck can also transmit information back to the vehicle to give firefighters a better view of an incident.

Scholfield said the vehicle will be available to other communities during the 2010 Games if needed. Just how far afield it might go would be up to senior staff at the Corporation of Delta and the mayor.

The week-long emergency exercise is part of a larger scenario, said City of Richmond spokesman Ted Townsend. Another scenario on Nov. 2 involved police descending on a home in Delta where they found someone working with what’s suspected to be nuclear materials, and then identifying a terrorist threat incorporating the use of nuclear toxins and a plan to disrupt the games.

n editor@southdeltaleader.com

—with files from Martin van den Hemel

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