MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Service members aboard Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, conducted a Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Drill outside of Building 100, April 16, 2015.
This course is important for situations involving hazardous material because someone could put themselves, their department or the entire base at risk.
Prior to the drill, students learned about chemistry, toxicology, how to make proper preparatory protection decisions and how to protect the public in a situation involving hazardous material.
“The exercise we did today was a culmination to a weeklong course that is training these young Marines to analyze a hazardous materials incident; whether it’s a spill or other large scale problem that could occur here on base,” said Steven Wood, the course director with the Civil Engineer Corps Officer’s School.
The course provides service members with basic knowledge of how to handle a real-life scenario involving hazardous material and maintain control of a situation until responders arrive.
“This course is very effective,” said Wood. “Hopefully these Marines and sailors will know they’re not the ones who are necessarily going to be handling real-life situations, but they’re going to know who to call, what the risks are, and that they can take initial steps when waiting for a hazardous material team to arrive.”
Sgt. John Lindsey, a student in the course, said it was more interesting and beneficial than he expected, adding that they put into action everything they learned throughout the course during the drill and the most difficult part was communicating.
“Conversing with the other students through the suits was really hard,” said Lindsey. “We had to use a lot of hand signals so we weren’t just screaming through our mask. It made simple tasks much more complicated then they needed to be.”
Wood said he was proud of how well all the students in the course performed.
”These guys are motivated,” said Wood. “They proved today that they were listening all week because they worked effectively in during the exercise.”
CECOS works with the Navy to provide this course by request of military installations all over the world.