Page 36 - Campus Security & Life Safety, July/August 2021

"However, hazardous materials incidents affecting campus settings are not only more common, but as hundreds of events from around the world demonstrate, they can be even more deadly than the most lethal campus shootings the world has seen to date."
By Michael Dorn
At the Ready
Be prepared for common, catastrophic and emerging campus hazardous materials incidents
Hazardous Materials
An important area of emergency pre- paredness for campus settings involves appropriate procedures for both internal and external hazard- ous materials incidents. These events can impact K–12 schools, institutions of higher learning and other campus settings in any region of the country, at any time, and without warning.
Campus Operations
Unfortunately, many campus organizations are not properly prepared for these disrup- tive—and, in some cases, deadly—incidents. Catastrophic but extremely rare active- shooter events garner widespread, inaccu- rate and alarmist media coverage that makes them seem far more common than is actu- ally the case. However, hazardous materials incidents affecting campus settings are not only more common, but as hundreds of events from around the world demonstrate, they can be even more deadly than the most lethal campus shootings the world has seen to date.
As one tragic example, a train accident near Ryongchon, North Korea, killed an esti- mated 3,000 people in April 2004. Available information indicates that every student and employee at an elementary school located several miles from the crash site was killed in this event. While regulatory requirements and safety practices in the United States are often better than those in many developing nations, tragedies here demonstrate that the United States is not immune to catastrophic hazardous materials incidents.
External hazardous materials incidents can result from over-the-road, rail, shipping, manufacturing, farming and clandestine drug manufacturing accidents, fires and other incidents. Adding to the risk posed by accidents, the potential for acts of violence using hazardous materials as weapons is of growing concern. American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have expressed concerns about the efforts of violent extrem-
ist groups to recruit chemists in recent years. The possibility of hazardous materials incidents inside buildings should not be ignored, either. Internal hazardous materials incidents can result from careless storage or handling of cleaning solutions and chemi- cals, from laboratory accidents and from
intentional acts.
Use of Hazardous Materials
For example, in the 1980s, university stu- dents learned that they could empty out the change in vending machines by stealing mer- cury from campus science labs and pouring it into the coin slots. These incidents created a nightmare for campus officials due to the requirements of hazardous materials clean- up. In another example, a North Carolina school district was forced to use a $15 mil- lion construction bond after a high-school student used chemicals from an unsecured chemistry lab to start a near total-loss fire. Because of school’s age, the district’s insur- ance would not cover the full cost of con- struction to renovate the school. Many tax- payers were not happy to bear the resulting tax burden because a teacher failed to lock a storage cabinet, classroom door and the door leading to the storage area.
The use of caustic chemicals to carry out “dosing” attacks by splashing acid or other chemicals on victims has become an emerging problem in countries where these types of attacks have previously been rare events. Though quite common for decades in many regions of the Middle East, Asia, the Subconti- nent and parts of Africa, these devastating acts of violence have been relatively rare in West- ern countries until London was hit with more than 1,500 such attacks in less than 36 months.
While (fortunately) still relatively uncom- mon in the United States, persons affiliated with a major anarchist movement have been disseminating instructions on the use of acids to carry out attacks.
Attacks on a reporter, police officers, counter-protesters and others have already
taken place during violent protests in multi- ple American communities. As multi-victim acid attacks have occurred in K–12 schools in Vietnam, Afghanistan, the United King- dom and other countries, there is growing concern among experts that one or two high- ly publicized attacks of this type in the Unit- ed States could result in the type of “conta- gion effect” that has been documented as contributing to the increase of mass casualty shootings. An Internet search for “acid attack victim photos” will reveal hundreds of truly disturbing images that illustrate how horrific these attacks can be.
As the use of firearms, vehicle ramming, arson and other popular attack methods on American campuses has demonstrated, one or two such attacks could cause serious gaps in emergency plans. Active assailant training pro- grams and drill approaches utilized by many campus organizations could become obsolete in a matter of days. For these and other rea- sons, campus organizations should consider availing themselves of the free assistance pro- vided by local and state emergency manage- ment agencies and local fire service staff when developing and updating emergency plans.
A Deadly Tendency
One potential deadly tendency has been for some organizations to combine severe weather, earthquake and hazardous materi- als incident sheltering into a single sheltering protocol. As the proper action steps for shel- tering are significantly different in each of these types of incidents, this approach could easily result in many easily preventable casu- alties. For example, while it can sometimes be safer to move staff and students into a basement or lower-level floor when shelter- ing for a tornado warning, doing so for an external hazardous materials incident is extremely dangerous because many chemi- cals sink to the lowest level in a building.
A particularly important aspect of hazard- ous materials incident emergency proce- dures involves the speed and accuracy of
36 campuslifesecurity.com | JULY/AUGUST 2021