Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Several local emergency personnel gathered at the Bonnaroo site for a morning of hazmat training hosted by the Coffee County Emergency Management Agency on Dec. 11.

The training was part of an 80-hour course to certify the 21 participants as hazmat technicians. Once they are certified, they recertify every three years.

Interim EMA Director Wade Evans said that they run around three to four training courses a year. He also explained that having certified hazmat techs in Coffee County is beneficial due to its proximity to I-24.

“We certify for hazmat tech because we have 30 miles of interstate, so we have an unknown amount of chemicals that’s coming down the road,” he said. “We could have anywhere or anything from chlorine leaks to a corrosive or radioactive material, so having the people certified in the county helps us mitigate the situation quicker and protect life.”

Once the training was completed, according to Evans, Coffee County will have the largest group of certified hazmat technicians, around 50, from Nashville down to Chattanooga.

The scenario for the training consisted of an overturned semi with different chemical barrels in the trailer and around the outside.

The first team goes down and figures out what chemicals are involved in the spill and, if able, mitigates the problem, and then a second team goes down and fixes the problems that they discover. There’s also a third team stationed away from the wreck at a makeshift decontamination station.

Evans explained that the first team, in a real-life scenario, would only have around 30 minutes of air to do their reconnaissance work which is why a second team goes in to mitigate the problem if necessary.

Coffee County also has a lot of hazard material that travels down the rail system that goes through the county, but Evan said the biggest threat of a hazmat spill is amazon and other big box retailers due to the variety of items that they haul at the same time.

“You may have two pallets of bleach and in the front, you may have two pallets of Windex,” he explained. “When ammonia and chlorine come together, it makes a toxic gas that will kill you.”

Evans estimated that they see on average four or five truck wrecks a month, and EMA is usually the first to respond to them.

If they are unable to mitigate the hazmat spill, then they call in a cleanup crew and notify the state who notifies the Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

He also noted that a lot of the wrecks happen between the 127 and 114 exits.

“People come off the mountain and then they think that they’re through all of the hazards, and then they get on that long straight away and fall asleep or veer off, so they wreck,” he said.

In addition to valuable training, the course offers the first responders a bonding experience, according to Manchester Deputy Fire Marshall Jeremy Woods.

“It builds comradery because we have to work together,” he said. “You can’t do it as just one. We always send in two. In this class there’s a mix of departments… so it lets everybody get to know each other a little bit better as well that we could possibly have to work with.”

The training had responders from Tullahoma Fire, Manchester Fire, the AEDC Fire Department and Winchester Fire Department.

Woods also explained that it’s important for the responders to have the knowledge to be able to keep themselves and the public safe in hazmat situations while noting that he likes attending training sessions to watch them show their skills.

“I enjoy seeing the next generation, I guess you could call it, of firefighters get training and see what they’ve learned and let them show what they’ve learned in the last couple of weeks.”