' 8 Thursday,'N0vemfer f3,'1997 Pblnmhp Valley Gazette
by Geoff Kreis
PVG Staff
Students at the Rosemary Clark Middle School
experienced first hand what Emergency Medical
Service crews have been training for as a chemical
spill prompted the evacuation of the school on
Wednesday, November 5.
The chemical spill involved
what was known to be a 3M
brand bathroom cleaning sup-
ply that had somehow leaked
onto the floor. The incident
occurred around l:00 p.m.
when a school janitor, whose
name has not been released,
was allegedly experimenting
with the substance.
According to Assistant Fire
Chief Steve Duga, the female
janitor felt numb on one side of
her body and passed out during
the spill. She was taken to the
Pahrump Medical Center for
treatment.
The Pahrump Fire Depart-
ment evacuated everybody out
of the school and blocked off
four intersections to prevent
arty additional gers that
have n associated with ....
IN TRAINING-- EMS workers Chris Racine (left) and Shawn
Driggers (right) attend to Greg Blatmen (middle), acting as the
victim in this recreation of a chemical spill.
ACTING QUICKLY- EMS workers Gary Thurman(iefl)
and Nico Simponis (right) remove articles of possibly con-
taminated clothing from Biatmen's body.
the spill.
"We wanted to pull everybody out of the school just
to be safe," said Duga. "Everything will most likely be
alright and be back to normal for the next school day."
Southern Nye County EMS crews recently finished
training for situations such as the one that happened at
CHECKED OUT-- Blatmen, playing the victim is tended to in
the detoxification area after being moved from the endangered
area.
UNDER PRESSURE-. Chris Racine
takes time out from the training to
get his blood pressure checked by
Leslie Maison.
the school. Their week long hazardous materials
(HAZMAT) training course ran from November 3-
7, and was underway when the spill at Rosemary
Clark occurred.
Twelve volunteers took part in the 40 hour haz-
ardous training class and all passed at 100 percent.
The students that volun-
teered for the training in-
cluded representatives from
the ambulance service, fire
department, Bureau of Land
Management, and Nye
County Search and Rescue.
"We need a team that
can control hazardous prob-
lems such as one that hap-
pened at the school," said
Steve Maison of the Nye
County Fire Department.
"So when problems hap-
pen like this one again, we
don't have to call another
team from someplace else
to come out here to control
it."
The training included
sessions on how to use
different equipment in
different situations,
learning which chemi-
cals are hazardous and
identifying them, and
how to work with
chemicals to quiclly
control different
chemical emergencies.
One part of the training"
course involved situa-
tions in which a team
had to run in a building
that supposedly had a
chemical leak. The
team had to find and
rescue a person that
was trapped in the
building. Once the per-
son was removed and
tended to, the team had
to go back in and alle-
viate the problem.
The team was pro-
vided with special suits
and masks that protect
them from most kinds
of hazardous leakage
or chemicals that can
affect the human body.
Each member was in-
structed on the proper
way to utilize equip-
ment during times of
emergency. EMS
crews in northern Nye
County will be under-
going the same train-
ing classes next week.
"Nye County is so
big that it's going to
need more than just one team to control the entire
area," Maison said. "Hopefully the northern part of
Nye County will doj ist as good on the course as we
• did," Maison said. ' ,t would be great to see Nye
County to have two of these hazardous rescue teams."
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