Federal Funds Support N.Va. Hazmat Teams

Grants Help Responders Prepare for Threats

Hazardous materials teams in Northern Virginia are receiving an infusion of federal money to bolster preparations for chemical, biological and other threats.

The funds were on the way before dozens of threatening letters, some containing white powder, were sent last month to financial institutions and regulatory offices across the country. Test results have been negative for toxins, but the incidents have drawn renewed attention to such potential dangers and the ongoing needs of responders more than seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The $190,000 in grants from the Department of Homeland Security has gone to hazmat teams in Arlington County and Alexandria, which have a combined squad, and Fairfax and Loudoun counties, state and local emergency officials said.

Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, for example, has used its $30,000 grant to order a hazardous gas vapor identifier. Responders using the tool will be "better able to recognize hazmat situations quickly," said Dan Schmidt, a spokesman for Fairfax County Fire and Rescue.

The device covers many other chemical agents. "It allows you to identify more of them, and the equipment is a lot more sensitive," he said.

Schmidt declined to provide details about the county's capabilities for detecting various agents, but he said the new equipment, once in hand, should speed up and increase the accuracy of field results and reduce reliance on laboratory testing.

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, one of the federal sources of such funding, said the grants "can be used to prepare for, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism and natural disasters," including nuclear, chemical, radiological and explosive incidents.

Gregory Britt, director of the technological hazards division of the state Department of Emergency Management, said the federal money is especially helpful given tight resources at the state level. Funding for a state program that coordinates 13 of Virginia's hazmat teams has remained basically static, he said. That effort, the Virginia Hazardous Materials Emergency Response Program, deals with about 60 major incidents across the state each year and receives $1.3 million in state funding, he said.

"We've had a flat budget for 20 years," Britt said. "Some of this money for the [federal] grants allowed them to purchase some things they could not afford to purchase in past years."

Virginia has received $1.9 million as part of the federal program this year, Britt said. That helps residents and responders, he said.

"These guys are doing this time after time. They have to make sure they are protected as well," he said. Overall, Britt added, Virginia jurisdictions have become better prepared in recent years.

"The equipment has changed, the training has changed, the working together of the different disciplines -- fire, police, EMS [emergency medical services] -- that's changed dramatically," Britt said. "Before 9/11, everyone kind of worked independently of each other. Police, you do what you do. Fire, you do what you do."

Fairfax launched a hazardous materials response team after the 2001 attacks. It responds to several hundred calls a year, including a mercury spill at a high school chemistry lab and investigations of suspicious powders, Schmidt said.

In recent weeks, the team has dealt with an oil spill and complaints from office workers who thought, accurately it turned out, that something unhealthy was coming out of their building's vent and heating system. An overuse of cleaning chemicals caused watery eyes and breathing troubles, Schmidt said.

Dealing with such threats takes practice and money, he said.

"Local governments continue to be squeezed with revenues and resources, so this is a way for counties and cities to ask for and receive money for some of these things we can't maybe afford and are not able to purchase, which is a great thing," Schmidt said. "You have to sort of start from the bottom up, and you keep improving on the training and the equipment . . . and get better at these kinds of emergencies."