The purpose of this grant is to seek funding for a rapidly deployable CBRNE detection system for the Laredo Fire Department to enhance the safety and effectiveness of current emergency procedures. The City of Laredo’s Fire Department has never owned a rapidly deployable CBRNE detection system. The Laredo Fire Department is a paid/career fire department serving over 210,000 citizens in Laredo, TX and Webb County. The City of Laredo is a developed community with significant hazardous materials issues that affect both the Fire Department’s ability to provide consistent response to all emergencies of this nature, as well as the safety of the families living in our community.

The City of Laredo is the nation’s largest in-land port that processes land, air and rail cargo on a large scale. Data compiled from the U.S. Department of Commerce indicates that in 2004, the total share of U.S.-Mexico trade passing through the port of Laredo was 58.9%. All other ports on the U.S.-Mexico Border totaled only 41.1%.

This commercial traffic has only increased over the past decade as more commerce is utilizing the Port of Laredo’s strategic location. The significant increase has offered many opportunities for the potential of a major hazardous material incident that would affect the lives of many families on both sides of the border as well as those that reside in the surrounding communities.

The mission of the Laredo Fire Department is to reduce and prevent the loss of life and property in the community due to fire, medical emergencies and other natural or man made disasters and catastrophes. This is accomplished through direct mitigation during these types of occurrences and through community-wide prevention efforts.

All 332 staff members are highly trained and State certified fire fighters. Many staff members are paramedics and those that are not are EMT-basics. Our training division provides our staff with year round training in the areas of technical rescue, hazardous materials, fire suppression and emergency medicine.

The Department operates 13 fire pumpers, 3 aerial ladders, 9 ambulances, 2 brush trucks and a hazardous materials response unit. Our primary response area serves close to 210,000 citizens in Laredo and Webb County. Quick response to an emergency call and the ability to mitigate properly is critical to our mission of public safety. The Fire Department currently has no gas, vapor or radiological detection capability. Operations are funded by a property tax levy that cannot support investment in a gas, vapor and radiological detection system.

The City of Laredo is located along the U.S.-Mexico border. IH-35 serves as the major highway with 58.9% of US-Mexico trade passing through our port of entry. We are 12 mile northwest of Rio Bravo, TX and 20 miles west of Oilton, TX.
The City’s primary response area is 83.44 square miles with 40% of this land area being utilized for residential purposes. An additional 43% is used for commercial, industrial or institutional purposes.

The situation our community faces today is the increasing volume of commercial traffic with hazardous cargo passing through our city via road and rail. In addition, we are experiencing an expansion of commercial warehousing that store the hazardous materials transported by commercial traffic. This reflects in an increase of calls our department makes to hazmat incidents.

Of note are recent emergency calls that posed a threat to our community and contained all of the necessary elements to escalate to a major disaster.

• A tractor- trailer overturned on Hwy 359 spilling a significant amount of highly toxic sodium hydroxide. The highway was closed for several hours. Prevailing winds threatened to carry fumes towards the City.
• A tractor-trailer was found to be leaking an unknown chemical. The trailer contained several pallets of AG Oxycom, an oxidizer corrosive that causes irritation of the respiratory track when inhaled.
• A train derailment caused several boxcars containing petroleum alkalate and benzene 10% to burn exposing one boxcar with tetrachchloroethylene. Residents in the immediate area were evacuated. Wind conditions threatened to carry fumes towards a populated area.

The existence of rail yards in the midst of a heavily populated area of town also poses a threat to those families living there. These boxcars transport a huge amount of cargo throughout the day at the risk of derailment.

A CBRNE detection system will allow our emergency responders to identify the levels of toxicity in the environment and to alert the parts of our community that need to be evacuated in a timely manner based on current wind patterns.

By identifying these elements and evacuating appropriately, the health and safety of emergency responders and the citizens in our community will benefit from the purchase of this equipment. This can be accomplished by rapidly deploying the detection equipment in a perimeter surrounding the incident and at various points around the city to monitor toxic plumes that may threaten the safety of our community and the emergency responders at the incident. By strategically arranging this equipment during a hazmat incident, our Department will be able to detect chemical hazards and monitor environmental safety by determining the dispersal of hazardous gases and chemicals.

Funding of the CBRNE detection system project will allow our highly trained Hazardous Materials unit to effectively mitigate a toxic spill incident. Components of this detection system can be arranged in a perimeter to detect chemical hazards and to monitor the environmental safety of the community, providing response teams control over potentially perilous situations by assessing the geographical dispersal of hazardous gases and chemicals.

The Fire Department Haz-Mat unit will be able to maximize the system by using an additional component of the system. It involves placing GPS-equipped wireless monitors in strategic locations to measure the levels of critical toxic chemicals and communicate their measurements to the CBRNE base station located at the command post. This information, along with weather data, will be transferred to the plume measurement software that will be running on a PC at the command post. The plume measurement software integrates the information and shows incident command staff a picture of the toxic plume, the speed at which it is spreading, and the concentration of the toxic compound.

This equipment can be shared with other departments in our City such as the Health Department and Environmental Department to enhance their mission of public health and environmental safety. It may also be used to assist the ten communities that have signed a mutual aid agreement with the City of Laredo.

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)