Lethbridge's firefighters exit the building during hazmat training. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge firefighters suit up for hazmat training day

Oct 13, 2020 | 12:52 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – 14 members of Lethbridge Fire & EMS took part in a day of training exercises regarding dangerous chemicals.

At the northside Fire Station 4 Training Centre, first responders got into their hazmat suits and entered their large training building, unsure of what they would find.

“They were going into our tower for what we call chemical hide-and-seek,” says Hazmat Team Lead Chris McLennon. “I’ve kind of hidden some chemicals in there, the guys have gone in with some detection gear. They had to make an attempt to find out where it was located and then bring it out and use some of our other advanced monitors to determine what that chemical was.”

Their biggest challenge is simply identifying what a particular chemical is.

“There is no end-all-be-all chemical detector that would allow us to determine exactly what a chemical is so we’ve got multiple techniques that we need to use to figure out what we’re dealing with. That’s a challenge in itself to determine what it is and then we need to go ahead and figure out how we’re going to deal with it.”

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Lethbridge’s hazmat team consists of 36 people and they all receive regular training.

The team also works throughout much of Lethbridge County with many of their calls dealing with the industrial sectors.

He estimates that they respond to about 400 calls per year that have “some sort of a hazmat component.” There might be five or six every year that require the efforts of the entire team.

A large element of what they do has to deal with drug manufacturing and the potentially dangerous chemicals that are often used.

“We do train with the police for [co-assessing] meth labs and, definitely, we’re all aware of the fentanyl crisis that’s going on. There’s been a huge call for us to come in and identify unknown white powders and determine whether or not it’s fentanyl or any of those other hazardous opioids.”

There are two major reasons that gives McLennon confidence in their ability to get the job done – the “gold standard” HAZMAT Protection Level A suits seen in this story’s photos and having the “accountability piece” where they know where all of their members are at all times while having a rescue team ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Trainees get suited up in hazmat gear. (Lethbridge News Now)

Hazmat trainees get ready to enter the training building. (Lethbridge News Now)

Hazmat trainees enter the training building. (Lethbridge News Now)

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