PARKMAN Law enforcement officers finish hazardous materials training

A state grant paid for protective suits and a week of seminars.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
PARKMAN -- Decked out in protective suits and carrying rifles and side arms, deputies slowly moved to surround a Boy Scout camp lodge that was hemorrhaging white smoke.
According to the story line at Saturday's training exercise, the wooden structure was a U.S. factory with a government contract to make poison gas. And past the white haze obscuring their vision, the cops had no idea what -- or who -- they would find.
Prepared
After a week of training, a team of 10 deputies from Trumbull, Ashtabula and Geauga counties are prepared to enter a disaster area to investigate or make arrests. They are now the only law enforcement officers in Ohio with that training, local officials say.
"This is training that you hope you don't have to use," said Daniel C. McClelland, the Geauga County chief deputy sheriff. "But we have already had a number of occasions when we could have used it."
Officers received training as part of their involvement in the Trumbull Ashtabula Geauga Law Enforcement Task Force, which evolved from the individual counties' drug task forces last year.
As well as deputies from each department, a Mosquito Lake park officer participated in training. A $40,000 state grant paid for protective suits and a week of seminars, which included practicing with Haz-Mat teams from Ashtabula, Geauga, Trumbull and Portage counties and the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna.
Haz-Mat team members are typically culled from fire departments and are not law enforcement officers, said Don Waldron, head of Trumbull County Haz-Mat and an instructor at the exercise. They know how to clean up after a disaster, not handle guns or arrest suspects.
Putting it to use
Deputies could use the training if they are ever called on again to enter an illicit methadone lab, or if there is ever need to investigate possible chemical attacks or acts of industrial sabotage, officials said.
"The last thing we want to see is any law enforcement officer getting himself contaminated and bringing it back to his family," Waldron said.
Working in the chemical suits is hot and uncomfortable, Chet McNabb, a Geauga deputy sheriff, said after spending a half-hour poking through the smoke filled mock chemical factory. In the heavy haze, and with only an infrared camera for sight, officers apprehended one person who could have been a victim or a criminal. The officers missed another hunkered up semiconscious in the rear of a loft.
McNabb said he thinks it is likely the group will be called on to do the real thing.
"Up until now, there was no one who had any training to do this," he said, drenched in sweat from his time inside the plastic suit. "Now, if they have any kind of incident, or if they have any kind of suspicion, they will just really want to check."
siff@vindy.com