PREPARING FOR THE WORST
Firefighters simulate a chlorine leak during HAZMAT training in Waterloo Thursday. About 20 area firefighters were getting advanced training.
WATERLOO — Kitchener’s fire department got 665 hazardous materials calls last year. Typically, they are all small-scale.
The New York City fire department gets several thousand each year.
“Some are large scale, some are small,” said Nicholas Del Re, a deputy chief and the head of the New York City fire department’s hazardous materials unit. “But even small scale entered into New York City sometimes end up being larger scale.”
That’s because of a population of 8.5-million, high-threat environment and the media, said the 54-year-old Brooklyn native on Thursday as he helped train Ontario firefighters to become HAZMAT technicians at the Waterloo Region Emergency Services Training and Research Centre.
“And ’cause it’s New York City,” Del Re added.
All that specialized experience dealing with hazardous materials is why Del Re, a 33-year FDNY veteran, was in Waterloo near the end of two weeks of training put on by the International Association of Fire Fighters.
About 20 firefighters from departments in Kitchener, Brantford, Guelph and North Bay were being trained to train other fire fighters in a HAZMAT Technician course Del Re helped develop.
“In New York, that’s his job, that’s his specialty,” Kitchener deputy chief Rob Martin said of Del Re’s expertise.
Kitchener has a specialty technical rescue team. However, its members do six other disciplines as well as HAZMAT, Martin explained.
“They have a broader scope they’re required to do and learn. We wanted to get trainers to train them how to do it.”
So for two weeks, expert firefighters from Toronto, Florida, Milwaukee and New York have helped school the locals, who will then be able to train others after the final training day on Friday.
“The mastery of teaching is why we brought them here,” Martin said of the first such training session held in Canada.
Thursday’s simulation in Waterloo involved rescuing one person and shutting down a chlorine leak. On Wednesday, a pretend ammonia leak at the Aud was the training exercise.
“They’re moving on to a higher level of training,” Del Re said.
“We train traditional firefighters that they need to make lifesaving rescues but then become defensive in posture. But these HAZMAT technicians will be trained to the level where they will be offensive in their posture.”
That means acting to stop toxic leak from spreading or continuing.
“They’re going to go down range and stop, release, mitigate, neutralize, distil — be more intimate with the toxic chemicals,” Del Re said.
“They need to better understand what the hazards are. Therefore, they can make proper selection of the kind of chemical protective clothing we wear. And ultimately serve the public.”