Heroes For Hire

By Peter Mitchell

Step aside Mr. Bond, there’s a new hero in town.

At the end of Upper Ottawa Street sits a non-descript building that looks like it has seen better days. Blink and you’ll miss it. But step inside and you walk into a secret agent’s dreamscape of high-tech equipment and state-of-the-art gadgetry. From Hazardous Material (HAZMAT) suits to a Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Explosive (CBRNE) truck designed to respond to instances of terrorism –these are the tools of the trade for today’s modern hero.

It is the home of TEAM-1 Environmental Services Inc., a Hamilton based emergency response company that, in twelve short years, has grown to provide North America wide coverage. With a local staff of fourteen full time and thirty-five part time employees, they are ready 24/7 to respond to truck rollovers, “white powder” calls, in-plant emergencies, and many other threats to the environment and ourselves. Their services are retained by many businesses and industries, and they are frequently called upon by all levels of government, the OPP and local police and fire departments. They do what no else can.

Mitchell Gibbs is TEAM-1’s Manager of Emergency Services. A giant of a man, he could probably grind any of today’s big screen heroes into the dust, and is the type of person you would want to take charge in an emergency. He began his career in waste management before helping start TEAM-1 in 1996. He is regarded as an expert in environmental emergencies, compliance and planning, and is sought after across North America as a speaker. He has also written on the same issues for many publications, and in 2003 co-authored a book with Debbie Connor, TEAM-1’s Manager of Technical Services. Entitled ‘Another Day In Paradise’, it provides a rare glimpse into their dangerous, often horrific, work.

“We’re sort of the Navy Seals of HazMat,” Gibbs says. “We’re very specialized. Everybody thinks the police and fire departments do all this stuff, but most don’t. They leave it up to private responders. Imagine a big tank of acid letting go in a plant and flooding the place. They’ll respond, they’ll do a search and rescue, and they’ll be there for health and safety; but they’re not in the clean up business. They’re there to fight fires and do extrication, not respond to HazMats or clean up chemical spills inside a plant.”

It’s not a case of passing the buck as it is of possessing it. Fire and police departments are already operating with strained resources and simply don’t have the budgets to add the millions of dollars of required equipment and instruction for Hazardous Materials and other related training. The economics of environmental response give private industry a distinct advantage.

“If we see there’s a return on our investment, we get into that business. I’ve got several million dollars worth of equipment here which is not supported by tax base. It’s out of my own pocket. We need a return on that equipment obviously, and that’s usually arranged or derived through retainers: an industry pays us a monthly retainer to be available to them. For example we have a truck that goes to chemical fires to monitor the air and we’ll tell the emergency workers how bad the air is so they know how to handle the fire. That’s a very expensive unit but it’s the only one, I’d say, probably in all of Canada. It has been at train derailments. It was at the Plastimet fire. We’ve seen the return on that.”

The facility is licensed to bring back toxic waste where it is processed in the safest means available. When possible, the waste is sent to recyclers. If recycling isn’t an option, every attempt is made to dispose of material through incineration rather than landfill. There is a hazardous materials landfill in Sarnia, but incineration is the preferred, greener option.

The tools of private enterprise also allow for greater diversification. TEAM-1 also responds to crime scene clean-ups: murders, stabbings, crack houses, meth labs and marijuana grow operations. And yes, they do respond to instances of terrorism.

Gibbs says, “We don’t have a whole lot in the province of Ontario but there are a lot of instances of ‘White Powder’ calls. Anthrax calls. Even though it’s not necessarily a Bin Laden terrorism cult, it could be the wacko down on James Street that wants to send stuff through the mail. That does happen. We’ve done in excess of 300 of those. Six months ago, a housewife was turned down for a loan and she sent ten threatening letters to ten various banks. It’s like a fire-alarm going off in a high-school. Ninety-five per cent of them are false alarms, but you have to respond as if it’s a real threat; because if it isn’t the school burns down. If you don’t treat it as Anthrax and it is one day, then everyone’s exposed. You go in thinking, ‘Hmmmm. This is probably a false alarm’; but you still have to go through all the motions to protect yourself.”

Terrorist acts are still relatively few and far between, particularly in Ontario. The truth is we should be in a higher state of alert from our own commercial endeavours than from the Taliban; and we are in more danger from human error than human malice. Highway and in-plant accidents are almost daily occurrences.

“I can’t tell you how many times we respond to a forklift that’s gone through the bottom of a drum,” Gibbs says. “Any day, any hour, there’s always something. You don’t just shut down on Friday at 5:00 and wait for Monday morning to start up again like an accounting office. There’s no rhyme or reason when anything happens, and things do happen. We’re running four or five hundred occurrences a year, 365 days a year. Sometimes there’s three or four a day.”

Highway accidents are inevitable at any time of year, but are more frequent in the summer when drivers are on the road more often, and are more complacent. Truck drivers tend to drive for longer stretches of time to take advantage of the daylight, passing motorists are more likely to cut in front of them, and everyone tends to put the pedal to the metal. It’s a daily headline waiting to happen. When it does, the accidents themselves are also more dangerous.

Gibbs explains, “In the winter when a truck wipes out on the highway, it tends to slide through the snow in the ditch. Whereas on a hot August day the truck’s going to hit the dirt on the side of the road and rip right open. Because they put these big fuel tanks on the side of the trucks, the fuel rips open and that can cause a lot of environmental panic. As soon as a spill gets into a sewer, the sewers are designed to carry water away and exit to a stream or a creek and that’s when you get exposure to fish and wildlife. So it’s very, very important to find out if it’s reached a sewer because it changes the whole scale of the incident: now you’ve got to clean the sewer, and you’ve got to catch it on the other end if it hasn’t already gone into the lake.”

“One of the most difficult jobs to do is to drill into the side of a gasoline tanker. A truck flips over onto the side, and you can’t hook up to the valve. You have to drill holes into the side of the tanker truck. That’s quite something to have to do that. It’s essential to have the proper equipment and training.”

Training is another area that has proven lucrative for the company. TEAM-1 provides an Emergency Services Training Academy that offers courses in a variety of fields including Fire Extinguisher Handling, Confined Space Rescue, and Hazardous Materials Technician. Their site includes railcars, chlorine cylinders, an underground sewer system, and a three storey fire fighting structure. The courses are designed to be site specific to the trainee’s needs. Registration is open to the public, and many companies are prepared to open their wallets.

“Training is a huge thing now with industries just to reduce their liability. They want to minimize their risk of having a spill, so a lot of companies send eight, ten, twelve people every six or eight months to get trained. We also get a lot of people training to become firefighters trying to get courses in theory and practical. We’re running around five to six hundred courses a year.”

No one can deny that stepping into a room filled with cyanide, combating a chemical fire, or cleaning up a murder scene drenched with blood ranks high on the stress meter. But when you’re running the company, putting your life on the line doesn’t pardon you from sweating the small stuff. The same old business pressures apply.

Making sure enough staff and equipment are available and in good working order are common headaches. Multi-tasking without dropping the ball is critical when handling multiple calls that are kilometers apart and lives are on the line. Budgets must be written and adhered to even though there is no telling what the next day will bring. It doesn’t matter if you’re saving lives or the planet, the bottom line still rules.

“Our best piece of equipment is our line of credit,” Gibbs says. “The tough part about this business is accounts receivable because insurance companies are tougher and tougher to deal with. They start to dictate what pricing should be. We don’t have a deal with the insurance company; we have a deal with the customer. And I constantly fight with them to say ‘These are the prices that are in place.’ We do big chemical fires --$400,000 jobs, and it takes the insurance company six months to sort it all out. In the meantime we’ve paid for the disposal; we’ve paid for the response. And they make you hang on. They don’t pay any interest and after six months they say there’s no coverage. We’re saving the planet but there’s no guarantee we’re going to get paid. And that leaves me very bitter sometimes when insurance companies don’t step up to the plate.”

Sadly, when it comes to the bottom line today’s heroes don’t always get the credit or respect they deserve. Someone has to save us from our disasters and clean up our messes because we can’t do it ourselves. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

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Biz Hamilton is published by Town Media Inc.