Interagency Disaster Management Preparedness and Response to a Terrorist Incident Research Paper

Role of Specific Air Monitoring and Detection Devices in Terrorist Related Hazardous Materials Incidents.

The term HAZMAT refers to the team that works with hazardous material. Hazardous material and terrorism are closely intertwined since most terrorist attacks obviously involve some form of hazardous material and therefore the HAZMAT team is inextricably involved in investigating, identifying, and dissembling this hazardous material. Their work, in fact, makes the HAZMAT member a crucial and invaluable part of our modern day lives. The following essay is a collection of sources that elaborates on the interconnections between HAZMAT and terrorism and the way that HAZMAT prepares and responds to terrorist incidents.

HAZMAT is an inextricable part of terrorism preparedness and response since terrorism inevitably deals with weapons of destruction that almost always constitute hazardous material. Examples of the hazardous material implicit in terrorist attacks are:

Chemical agents

Biological agents

Radiological and nuclear materials

Explosives (Community Emergency Response Team (CERT))

HAZMAT works in various ways to help the citizen become more aware of the identity of hazardous material, how to react when found, how to identify them, and what to do in the possibility of an attack. There are thousands of self-study or other courses online that are prepared by HAZMAT

to help first responders (namely fire, police, ambulance and health) deal with toxic material when they arrive at the spot of a terrorist attack (see for instance Terrorism/Hazardous Materials Awareness

for First Responders in Ontario: Self-Study).HAZMAT also offers meetings and courses in order to train professionals and civilians in response and preparedness of and for terrorist attacks. Their courses are available free to all states and can be accessed via the Internet (for instance FEMA. Or LARA Emergency Response to Terrorism: HazMat ) Aside from educating the public, the main jobs of the HAZMNAT team are to ensure that proper environmental controls are in place and maintained in order to prevent chemical releases in the event of a terrorist attack. If the attack does occur and chemical releases happen, the HAZMAT professionals respond by mitigating impact, limiting human exposure to the toxic release, and attempting to minimize the impact. (CDC Hazardous Materials.)

Unfortunately, whilst most of the websites that I have seen related to HAZMAT seem promising, and the people whom I have interviewed are enthusiastic and optimistic about their task, the reality may….....