By Brad Rhen
Lebanon Daily News
Copyright 2007 Lebanon Daily News
All Rights Reserved
ANNVILLE, Pa. — It was deja vu all over again as emergency crews escorted students through a fire-hose shower for decontamination after noxious fumes were reported at a local high school last night.
This time, though, it was just an exercise.
Firefighters from across the county converged on the old Annville-Cleona High School for a hazardous-materials training exercise that was similar to an actual call at Lebanon Catholic School on April 4.
In that incident, a mixture of cleaning agents caused an odor in one of the school’s bathrooms and prompted an evacuation. Eventually, more than 200 people were decontaminated outside the school, and many were taken to the hospital.
According to the scenario last night, a science teacher deliberately mixed chemicals together to cause a reaction. Firefighters responded to an automatic fire alarm and, after locating the students inside the building, escorted them outside, where they were decontaminated via fire hoses.
The victims were played by students from Lebanon Valley College and Boy Scouts from Troop 11, sponsored by St. Mary’s Church in Lebanon.
Next, a team dressed in full chemical suits entered the building to locate and define the source of the fumes. Upon the team members’ exit from the building, they were thoroughly scrubbed down at a decontamination center that was set up next to the building.
Matt Clements, chief of the Lebanon County HazMat Team, said the procedures used last night were nearly identical to those used at Lebanon Catholic a month ago. Some changes were made to metering procedures to test for chemicals that, he said, were implemented in the hopes of eliminating some false positives that were received at Lebanon Catholic.
The people actually doing the testing was another dissimilarity. Last night, firefighters, not members of the HazMat team, did the testing.
“They’re going to be shadowing the fire departments that would take our place if we were on another case somewhere else,” Clements said. “We had our guys that do it all the time follow them through so if they got hung up they could help them and prompt them through it.”
Jason Marin, assistant principal at Annville-Cleona High School, was on hand to act as a liaison for the school. He said the school’s crisis plan calls for someone from the district to work with emergency personnel in such situations.
Last night’s exercise, he explained, was a chance for the district to practice communicating with emergency crews during a crisis.
“The more practice we can have, the more practice they have,” he said, “the better equipped we are to react when we have to.”
As an example of practice, Marin recalled a fire in the roof of the new building that occurred Jan. 17 while the students were in classes at the old building several hundred feet away.
“So we got the feel for it, but that was a small incident,” he said. “In a large-scale incident, they’re curious what my role will be and how I’ll benefit them and vice versa.”
The exercise is one of the last events to be held in the old building, which was vacated the week before Easter. It is scheduled to be torn down in June to make way for athletic fields and a parking lot.
“It’s hard to do something to this scale in a facility you’re trying to maintain,” Marin said.
Several doors and windows were purchased during an auction at the school on April 14 so participants could break them last night during the exercise, Marin said.