HazMat disaster incidents require a comprehensive response that encompasses planning, management, response, mitigation, and recovery to ensure provider safety, protection of the community, conservation of the environment, and regulatory compliance. (International Association of Fire Chiefs, 2019) Both responders and communities must continue to explore new strategies to decrease worker injuries while also increasing overall resilience. Providing the appropriate level of HazMat training for all first responders, as well as community members, will help to better protect local communities, improve response efficacy, reduce recovery time, and increase resiliency of first responders, as well as the communities they serve. This training will also address important health and safety challenges facing the first responder community, such as PTSD and suicide, to help protect the overall health and safety of the workers. The IAFF has been effective in planning, implementing and operating worker health and safety training programs for more than 30 years. Through this grant funding, annually the IAFF will deliver: five Frontline Safety classes, 20 IAFF Peer Support Training classes, 20 IAFF Resilience Training classes, 1,500 web-based Disaster Response Peer Support Training classes, 1,500 web-based IAFF Safety Planning Intervention for Suicide Prevention Training classes, and 10 IAFF Community HazMat Education classes. During the 5-year grant period, the IAFF will deliver 15,275 classes and train a minimum of 21,875 workers (instructor led and web-based training combined). Through this continued cooperative agreement, the IAFF will: 1. Utilize advanced GIS, collaborative contact databases, hazard risk assessments, and applications of demonstrated need to identify and provide the HazMat training programs described above. The IAFF remains dedicated to increasing diversity and training of underserved populations. 2. Improve overall worker health and safety, and increase worker and community resiliency, through the delivery of updated curricula that encompasses worker safety (including new strategies to help decrease injury and death), behavioral health awareness, opiate/substance abuse disorder, suicide prevention, community HazMat awareness. 3. Integrate new technologies (such as electronic tablets, an IAFF online library of tools and resources, mobile hotspots, web-based applications, etc.) for course delivery, ensuring consistent deployment to all students while also improving access to technology across all student populations. 4. Employ multiple, robust quality assurance protocols to provide defined benchmarks and measure training effectiveness. The IAFF is dedicated to ensuring the training program meets and exceeds the NIEHS Minimum Training Criteria Document resulting in workers who safety-conscious, strong decision makers, positive role models, and who may serve as worker-trainers in their field.
