CDP provides hazmat training to Alabama fire recruits

FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) partnered with the Alabama Fire College’s Regional Training Center in Anniston last week to teach its Hazardous Materials Operations (HMO) Course to 18 fire recruits.

The training took place on week three of the regional training center’s nine-week training program and provided the students the knowledge and practical skills they need to properly analyze and safely respond to hazardous materials incidents.

Prior to arriving on campus, the recruits completed the CDP’s Hazardous Materials Awareness Distance Learning Course, which provided them awareness-level hazardous materials competencies.

“The greatest benefit of sending our students to the CDP is exposing them to the CDP’s immersive strategy for training,” said Assistant Chief Johnnie Phelps of the Anniston Fire Department’s Training Division, who helped coordinate the training package.

“The CDP provides the student with every available tool to be successful in a real-world hazmat event. The ability to provide our recruits with the best possible training not only benefits our training center, but also the departments which hire them following graduation,” he added.

Recruits like Joshua Hunnicutt, from the Davis Lake Fire Department, immediately saw practical uses for tactics taught in the HMO course, such as product control, where students learn to stop or divert hazardous materials from entering waterways. Hunnicutt said the numerous creeks in his area could be a concern during a hazmat incident.

Marissa Hays, a recruit for the Cahaba Valley Fire Department, said instructors for the HMO course made the course information tangible.

“You understood how every element in the book will react if it’s involved in a fire you respond to,” she said.

That practical knowledge, according to Jackson Arnold, a recruit from the White Plains Fire Department, will help him remember to be astutely aware of his surroundings every time he responds to an incident.

In addition to the Alabama recruits, the class included students from Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

For more information about the CDP’s HMO course, visit https://cdp.dhs.gov/training/course/PER-322.