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Budget cuts impact resources for major hazmat incident in South Sacramento
by Ed Fogle, published on July 6, 2011 at 6:43 PM
Storyline: Breaking and Action News Stories
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Sacramento, CA | A level 3 Hazmat situation shuts down a large industrial area in South Sacramento. Budget weakend hazmat team has to reach out with unusual mutual aid requests.
Wednesday morning, the Sacramento City Fire Department was called to Mike and Sons Inc, in the 8500 block of Elder Creek Road, for a commercial trailer fire. When firefighters arrived “they realized the doors were shut and there was a very pungent odor; so they turned this into a level three hazmat which is the highest level of hazmat response that we have”, Niko King, Assistant Chief for Sacramento City Fire Department stated.
As things progressed, they contacted the shipper and the property owner discovering that there were over forty household products in the trailer, King stated. “For some unknown reason, something happened in there and there was a chemical reaction taking place.”
Evacuations began immediately. King stated that as a result of the off-gassing of the product and wind direction, over fifty-five business were evacuated which equated to 520 people. Reverse 911 was utilized to assist with the evacuations. Traffic was backed up all the way down Young Creek Drive as area workers vacated the industrial park. King stated that the evacuation was in place for about four hours. King also stated that a seven digit hotline was put in place to update evacuees and let them know when they could return to their businesses.
One person, who reportedly inhaled a good amount of the vapors, was transported to the hospital via paramedics.
Large fire suppression lines were put in place in the event they had to fight fire, and measures were taken to protect storm drains from potential contaminated water runoff as a result of firefighting efforts.
“What’s unique about this, Sacramento Fire department just experienced some budget cuts; it cut our hazmat team right in half,” King stated sternly. “…so, we had mutual aid resources from Metro Fire, Hazmat 109 come in. And what was really unique, we had to reach out and get Roseville’s hazmat team to come into the City of Sacramento to assist in mitigating this incident.”
It was finally determined that the substance was some sort of refrigerant oil. The assumption is that due to the warm rising temperature in the trailer, the container of product exploded then mixing with other materials in the trailer.
Many agencies responded to this incident to assist Sacramento City Fire, such as: Sacramento Metro Fire, Roseville Fire, and CERT to name a few. The Red Cross also responded with their Disaster Relief unit.
King stated that all the hazards had been mitigated and the incident would be turned back over to the shipping company.
Image by: MaverickPhotography.us
Image by: SacMav.com
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Niko King seems to have forgotten that it is the firefighter union itself that chose to respond to the budget cuts by laying off staff. It is also the Local 522 that chose to "eat their young" by laying off firefighters based on seniority and not merit, causing a staff reduction that is disproportionately larger than the budget reduction.
There is enough blame to go around for this budget mess, and the firefighters need to also look in the mirror at themselves on this one.
“What’s unique about this, Sacramento Fire department just experienced some budget cuts; it cut our hazmat team right in half" King stated sternly
If they were not laid off, where did the other half of our former hazmat team go?
It sounds like you know the story, but you are giving it out in dribs and drabs. Very recently there was a 2nd company of firefighters fully trained and equipped to respond to Hazmat incidents, now they are gone.
But the firefigthers are still there with the same Hazmat response knowledge that they had 6 months ago. Did the fire department sell the 2nd companies Hazmat equipment? Or is this simply a matter of the fire department not renewing the annual cert training?
And is this one of those retalliation things where the fire department cuts a relatively low cost training cert to make a point to the city council on all the bad things that happen when budgets get cut. Or did cutting the 2nd Hazmat company (whatever cutting means when the employees haven't been laid off) actually save substantial dollars?
Regarding Sac FD cuts to water rescues, Cap Radio sez:
"Sac Metro Fire did not cut its special ops programs, in part because it does not pay the special incentive pay Sac Fire pays its firefighters."
http://www.capradio.org/articles/2011/07/05/fire-department-special-ops-budget-cut
Is this one of those examples where I should not believe what the media reports, and only get my info from union card holders?