CBRN / HazMat Training Blog

The National Ambulance Service Command and Control Guidance, published in April 2019, brings together lessons learned from recent major incidents and event responses both from within the UK and around the world, as well as drawing on the experiences of its partners in the Police and Fire and Rescue Service.

One of the resounding messages of this document is the vital contribution that command decisions play in enhancing clinical outcomes, increasing survival rates and maintaining first responder safety. 

For the last thirty plus years, the HazMat training community has looked to Level A personal protective equipment (PPE) as the best way to safeguard HazMat specialists and first responders when handling chemical incidents.

But is Level A protection always the best choice? And are there some situations where Level A might actually be causing more harm than it does good?

These were just a few of the questions that were raised in a recent podcast interview on the online HazMat forum The HazMat Guys, featuring personnel protection expert Jeff Stull from the 'Rethink Level A' campaign.

As HazMat and CBRNe incidents become larger in scale, more complex and more unpredictable, the ability for emergency services agencies to be able to work together has never been more crucial.

In the UK, reviews of response to major national incidents have confirmed the capabilities of emergency services when carrying out their individual roles.

But a whole new set of challenges can arise when these separate groups are called upon to demonstrate interoperability.

Being able to predict how civilian individuals will react within the first minutes, hours and days of a major nuclear attack could well provide a life-saving resource for government agencies and emergency first responders.

And it this specific goal that has served as the impetus for an innovative Homeland Defence and Security Information Analysis Centre (HDIAC) research project titled 'A Framework for Modelling Society Following a Nuclear WMD Event'.

The threat to public safety from the release of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive (CBRNe) materials is constantly evolving.

The effectiveness of response to any major CBRNe incident relies on cooperation between numerous government departments, agencies and public services - each of whom will be tasked with their own specific areas of responsibility in identifying the source and scope of the contamination and securing the area.

Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRNe) threats are constantly evolving and can present some significant challenges for those charged with security and first response.

The efficient, successful resolution of any incident relies on the capacity for emergency teams to quickly evaluate a scene - and to do so in the midst of what will often be a complex, demanding and hazardous environment.

Situational awareness - or the ability to efficiently assess one's surroundings, to identify existing threats and to predict future events - is widely acknowledged as being an essential contributor to the effectiveness of CBRNe emergency response.

In this blog post we explore how the provision of realistic hands-on CBRNe training scenarios can play a key role in enhancing situational awareness to support decision-making, mitigate risk and save lives.

The 12th annual CBRNe Convergence will take place in Nashville Tennessee this November 2019 - providing a showcase for the largest CBRNe exhibition in North America, as well as a packed programme of workshops, presentations and hands-on events for CBRNe and HazMat professionals.

This year's event is themed around the merging of civilian and military response to CBRN and IED threats.

The risk of encountering a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear explosive (CBRNe) hazard is an ever growing reality for emergency teams in the course of routine incident response.

In such situations, the extent to which they have been trained, and are confident, in the principles of CBRNe incident management and CBRNe casualty management will be of paramount importance.

The provision of authentic, hands-on training scenarios can play an invaluable role in preparing HazMat teams and first responders for the raft of increasingly unconventional and unpredictable chemical threats that they may be required to handle.

The often irregular nature of these incidents, together with the diversity of the environments in which they can be found, can pose significant challenges for instructors as they seek to provide training experiences that are as realistic as possible.