HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Volunteer members of the Southern Nye County Hazardous Materials Response Team set up decontamination equipment during the deployment drill held yesterday morning at the Desert View Regional Medical Center. Advertisement

It took only 16 minutes for the Southern Nye County Hazardous Materials Response Team to set up two decontamination tents outside the Desert View Regional Medical Center yesterday.

While the volunteer emergency service personnel worked on setting up the tents where patients who had been contaminated with hazardous materials, or HAZMAT, would be undressed, hosed down, and moved to the second triage tent, the Southern Nye County Radio Amateur Communications Emergency Services (RACES) volunteers were stationed both inside and outside the hospital, checking for communication points to transmit information via their ham radios.

More reliable than cell phones, and without interfering with hospital equipment, the ham radios allow RACES to communicate from anywhere in the hospital, including the basement.

Since the decontamination deployment was only a drill conducted by the Nye County Local Emergency Response Committee, the volunteers didn't wear the HAZMAT suits they would have had there been an actual emergency.

All the equipment was brought to the hospital at 9 a.m., and the majority of it came out of one white truck about the size of a small moving van.

As Jack Martincavage, fire technical specialist for emergency services put it, "There's a lot of equipment in that dinky little truck."

And it's equipment that can be transported almost anywhere in the county; the 30-member HAZMAT team can respond to a emergencies as far away as Beatty.

The decontamination process is quick and efficient.

Two bays are set up in the first tent, one equipped with a gurney for non-ambulatory patients and the other bay without one for patients that can still walk.

Hoses and nozzles mounted to the ceiling of the tent are connected to a fire truck outside, which provides the water or other cleaning agents applied to the victims.

Martincavage said in most cases, soap and water is enough to wash hazmat off a person, but in a situation where water could exacerbate a dangerous chemical's effects, the team has neutralizing agents available as well.

Although most people, particularly in southern Nevada, associate decontamination with radioactive material, Martincavage stressed that there are many potential hazardous materials and scenarios possible.

Once the victim is hosed off and decontaminated, (the water is caught in a trough and pumped outside to a containment tank, where it can be properly disposed of), he or she would then be placed in the next tent, set up with a number of cots and used as a triage center.

Victims would then be taken just around the corner into the hospital.

If additional services or transportation were needed, a shared agreement with both the fire department and school district would provide ambulances or school busses to transport victims.

After the decontamination station was set up, hospital personnel were invited to take a brief tour of the emergency facility and familiarize themselves with it.

Although this drill was for a large-scale accident or emergency, the operation can expand or limit itself as needed.

"The whole point is to limit contamination," Larry Levi, member of the Hazardous Materials Response Team, explained. "We can do small-scale decon in a small shower stalls."

The decontamination tent was purchased recently through a grant to the Local Emergency Response Commission from the state Emergency Response Commission.

The cost of the equipment is approximately $30,000, although the team has had the triage tent for about five years.

"I think it all went really well," Levi said about the drill. "We all broke it up so no one has a big part to do."