Decontamination Training

From A:

Last week at work was a practical training course required to join the hospital decontamination team.  This team is made up of about 50 hospital employees who are trained to decontaminate victims of a hazardous material spill / explosion prior to administering medical care.

I was one of three new team members participating in the hands-on training course (I had taken the classroom portion of the team requirement previously).  The others training with me were nurses from the Emergency Department.

Decontamination basically consists of supplying "copious amounts of water" in order to wash off any sort of hazardous material.  Our job is to set up a high-powered 3 nozzle sprayer (called a trident) to the fire hydrant, as well as a single nozzle sprayer to wash off any materials not washed away by the trident.

 setting up and positioning the trident

practicing with the single sprayer nozzle

We also set up a large decontamination shower.  Once victims have gone through the trident and single nozzle sprayer, they enter the shower to finish washing off with soap and water.

On training day, Gainesville had a high of 94 degrees (not to mention what the heat index was) so wearing the hazmat suit was like exercising in a sauna.  Luckily, we were only wearing practice suits, which are much cooler than the real thing.

donning my sauna hazmat suit

In the photo above, I am adding the respirator supply battery.  The suit also has a voice amplifier, which picks up vibrations from your throat and sends it to a speaker so people can hear you talk to them.  It makes you sound like a robot, which is a little freaky.  All suited up in the real thing, I'll look something like this:

Hopefully our team will never be needed for a real event, but at least we know what to do just in case.