Handling Hazardous Materials

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – First Responders encounter many hazardous materials that involve dangerous fumes and chemicals that must be dealt with.

Muskingum County Emergency Management and Office of Homeland Security Director Jeff Jadwin talked about the Hazardous Materials Unit that the county uses to remediate accidental leaks and spills.

“We have a haz-mat truck and trailer that carry the equipment we need for any type of incident that would involve a chemical spill or chemical release. We also have a trailer that’s a highway spill response that’s for fuel and DEF and that kind of stuff. It’s not for true chemicals, so. We carry suits, we carry all the equipment we need. It’s housed here at Zanesville Station 3, so it responds from here,” Jadwin said.

The units are staffed by local firefighters who have been certified to perform the dangerous tasks associated with stabilizing the scene of a hazardous material accident. Each response is paired with an EMS crew that is dedicated to treating any first responder’s injuries.  

“It can be a highway spill, it can be a factory, a business, it can be a hamburger joint, it can be a nursing home because they’ve mixed the wrong cleaning agents. So we have all kinds of responses, so. There’s a wide variety. If we have what they call a Type 1 response, which is a biological or… a radioactive response, we can handle some, but you’re looking at 4 or 5 hours before you can get a team out of another big city here,” Jadwin said.

Though Interstate 70 initiates a large number of responses to fuel spillage, Muskingum County is fortunate to have the equipment to mitigate the effects of hazardous material emergencies in a timely manner.