When Seconds Matter

Good afternoon and welcome to today's webinar, When Seconds Matter, Protecting Emergency Responders and the Public from Radiation.

This is a great topic for us to cover. It's been a while since we've covered this topic. And quite frankly, there's been a lot of evolution in the technology and the, equipment out there that firefighters can use, to monitor situations, whether it's a non-emergency, public event or if it's an emergency situation crews are called out to. So we're excited to put this program on today. I'd like to thank the folks at Blackline Safety for sponsoring today's presentation and really bring an incredible lineup of presenters who can really just bring this to the firefighter level so they have an understanding whether you're in an engine company, rescue company, or even a hazmat company. Today, like I said, we'll hear from, four presenters who really bring a variety of expertise. 

Today's first presenter is Bobby Salveson, who served as a firefighter, since nineteen ninety four. He became the chief of the East Meadow Volunteer Fire Department in two thousand fourteen. 

He joined FDNY in 2000, later serving in special operations along with HAZMAT and Squad 288, and then the HAZMAT company number one. He teaches HAZMAT and confined space rescue at both the New York State and Nassau County Fire Academies, and he's also one of the cofounders with the HAZMAT guys. 

Also from the HAZMAT guys is Mike Monaco, who joined FDNY's HAZMAT One in 2005, bringing in years of experience in both firefighting and specialized rescue. Since 2008, he's been an educator in hazardous materials known for making complex topics accessible to the fire service. He holds a degree in neurological physiology from SUNY, Stony Brook and has spent over two decades focused on hazmat safety and training. 

We have Brandon Dean Morris, who is the general manager and instructional systems design specialist at SRTCC with nearly twenty years of hazardous materials experience across North America. 

He also serves as a senior engineer for MXV rail and chief pilot for both organizations. 

Brandon holds a wider range of certifications, including radiation safety officer and surveyor, HAZMAT specialist, OSHA outreach trainer for the general industry, contract, and marine, and he also attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for his aerospace engineering degree. 

Finally, today, we have Bill Sundstrom, who is a Regional Sales Manager for Blackline Safety. He's got over 20 years experience with instrumentation engineering, and he's been supplying guidance with both portable and fixed gas detection solutions to the industrial and emergency response customers during his career there. As a Regional Manager with Blackline Safety, he applies his knowledge of connected safety devices to ensure his clients are comfortable with the latest innovations in technology and help provide their workforce with a safe working environment. 

As always, if you have any questions, please send them in. We'll get to those towards the end of the presentation today. And if you are a few minutes late, this archive will be available for you to view, in whole, within 24 hours. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Bill Sundstrom to begin today's program. Thank you, Bill. 

Thanks, Peter. 

What we'll cover today, are some good subjects. 

Rising radiation risks, radiation 101, recognizing and measuring radiation, protecting responders, detection gaps, choosing the right detection tools, and then we'll have some Q&A at the end of the session. 

Thanks again for joining, and I'll pass this on to Bobby. 

Hey, everybody. 

One of the things with the radiation is that people think that it's it's not my problem. 

So, you know, like, oh, I don't have a a nuclear reactor in my my district or something like that, but it's it's not like that. It's not a nuclear plant thing anymore. It's in transition a lot of times. So if you have a hospital in your area or you have a hospital near you and they might be transporting in and out, even food production facilities or research labs or heavy industries or even the construction industry, is one of the ones that I've seen quite a bit, is you have radiation probably going by. 

In transport, typically, it's okay, but there are things that happen that are not necessarily anticipated. Well, we can anticipate, like traffic collisions, like fires, warehouse fires, industrial accidents, or or that kind of stuff. So you, as a responder, may unknowingly walk into the presence of a gamma emitter. Okay? 

And these these types of emergencies where we think of a structure just a straight up fire or something like that, they've evolved into what we like to call a multi-threat environment. Like, we can have a gas leak, a chemical release, and even a radiological risk, thrown in there just for good measure. So these things that, like, the EXO 8 can actually help because it's I don't wanna say it's unique, but it kinda is. The way it's doing it, it's very novel, is is that it's able to pick up both chemical hazards and radiological threats at the same time, which is a very nice thing for a responder because you just basically put up one device and it handles a lot of your problems. 

So that brings us to the point of, you know, where is this stuff, the gamma radiation? And it's a lot of places. A lot more places than people think, I think. 

Your traditional Geiger counter, you know, your old school, operation, it's useful, and it's still being used out there, but they require a lot of training to move through these scenes manually. Right? And and I'm not gonna say it's inefficient with a talented operator. It is a very easy operation, but as your time with that meter gets less and less, it becomes a little bit more in you know, it's it's only one of our hazards. 

Now one of the big problems is is that gamma radiation is silent, invisible, fast-moving. It does not give you the luxury of giving symptoms before it's too late. Can you get symptoms? Yes. But you need a significant amount of radiation for you to have symptoms in a time frame where you would notice it at the operations. 

Radiation is one of those few hazmat operations where if you don't have a meter, you don't know it's there. 

So that's another one where if you're using the, let's say, the EXO 8 for a chemical hazard, well, then you're getting that bonus gamma, real time detection when you get this. And then it also ties back to the cloud. Right? They have this, direct to cloud connectivity, which means that your instant commander or somebody that's remote can be seeing those radiation levels on a dashboard, not just, like, individual readings on that device in the field, which is a very handy, technique out there. So this means that you have to have it it metering is just part of the puzzle. And we say this all the time in the show, is that handling that radiation, it requires this type of mindset. 

Your radiation response is not intuitive.

It's not, practiced a lot. I would say the vast majority responders, globally don't deal with radiation on a constant thing. And and the fact that you can't smell it or you you can't feel it or taste it or anything like that makes it a lot harder. It's more of a theoretical thing. So our first responders are we're trained for visual threats or audible threats or, you know, smoke and fire and vapors, but individual threats cause hesitation. And because it's so theoretical, as soon as something beeps, we see people just back up. And, the beeps and the blinks, they're part of the whole operation. 

This means that, you know, we have this, like, okay, fast detection, fast recognition gives us faster actions, and then we are much safer. Right? We have that time dose, time distance and shielding kind of thing. So this EXO 8, which we've been playing with for quite a while now, thanks to black line, is that you can recognize your radiation way before they become like a personnel exposure, which is, again, a handy thing. 

The next slide. Sorry. 

So now let's go through radiation just one zero one. Just the lightweight stuff is that you basically have four or five ones. The re I see x-ray on there as well. We we joke about this on the show is that, you know, what happens if you have an x-ray leak? 

You just turn the switch off and it goes away. But the other guys are kind of they're present. Right? So you have your alpha, your beta, your gamma, and your neutron. 

I like to equate so when a molecule when an atom is in simplistic terms, when there's a mismatch of newer neutrons and protons, it's very it's angry with that, and that's called radiation. Right? So it is able to get rid of those that mismatch by doing one of two things. It's either gonna squirt out some energy or it's gonna squirt out some mass. 

And in the case of alpha and beta, that's our mass side, and then the gamma and neutron, that is the energy side. And so if you think about alpha like a bowling ball, I can only throw a bowling ball, let's say, 30 feet. But beta, like, as a baseball, I can throw that 300 feet. Right? 

So alpha is very heavy. It's slow. It's stopped by skin, like the dead skin on your person. 

But it is not a problem unless you really inhale or ingest it. Okay? And I'm seeing this in a general format, so I just don't want anybody having a panic attack right now. But, you know, and and it that's why we throw on our respiratory protection and we take care of that. Beta, on the other hand, is smaller, and this can penetrate skin, but it's usually stopped by PPE, tinfoil, paper, that kind of stuff. 

Gamma is our high-energy deep penetration, requires time, distance, shielding, and the reason why we like to pick up on gamma is because it does do that high distance thing. So I can pick it up from a good distance away and, and be in general safer operations. 

And Neutron, I won't say it's super duper rare, but I'm gonna say statistically speaking, it's less rare less less likely to see. We have seen it in, like, Troxel gauges, like ground density, operations. So it's not unheard of to be seen in the city slash rural. It could be anywhere in the middle. But that's one of these things where the the EXO really kinda picks up because it has a scintillation, crystal sensor inside there, which is one of the most reliable ways to pick up gamma radiation over a huge range. In fact, I think, I was kinda looking at the, the the statistics before. It picks up one to two hundred micro rems per hour. 

That's that's incredible. So this understanding of this radiation is good, but you need to understand how it interacts with your people and your equipment. 

This is kinda where, like, we we need to understand a couple of different things. Right? So we have contamination, we have exposure, there are some crass ways of explaining this, but I like, you know, wearing exposed your your bathed in radiation energy all the time, but it does not stick to you. Once it sticks to you, then you contaminate it. So you can decontaminate washing people off or whatever. Getting the material that physically attracts to your skin, your clothes, your tools, your environment, we can get that off. You can't de-expose. 

Now airborne contamination on the end, think about inhalation, inhaled particles, so therefore, we throw on our SCBA and we are taken care of on that one. The surface decon, thinking like dirty bombs or, you know, dust clouds, This is gonna require some gross decon PPE doffing, taking stuff off. So this is good because, like, this is one of those things where the EXO 8, you can just drop it at an operation, and it's doing that real-time airborne levels that you can see if it spikes from a remote location giving that great distance, type thing. So, you know, I don't wanna get exposed. If you're standing in the rain briefly, you're gonna get wet. But if if I drop a bucket of mud on you, you're gonna be carrying it wherever you go. So, hopefully, that explains a lot of that stuff. 

Alright. Did I transfer right? Alright. I think I did. Although, I don't think I did that. 

So when it comes to radiation, right, understanding where it is is is half the battle. Understanding the components of it and how it's gonna interact with you to be as safe as possible, that's the other half. And this is the part that in classrooms, we generally start to see people kinda get that glazed look over their eyes when we actually start talking about dose and dose rate and the numbers that are involved. We're not gonna go super deep into the numbers today. 

We're just gonna start to get a basic idea of how the radiation is measured, very similar to the other components of the EXO 8. You know, if you look at oxygen, it's gonna be in percentage. If you look at something like carbon dioxide, it's gonna be in parts per million. Understanding your units of measure becomes critically important. 

And in in radiation, we have two main ways that we measure radiation. The first is gonna be sieverts (Sv), and the other is "rem". First responders, we generally see everything in the world as far as rems, microrems, millirems. Sievertz is out there, and it is about it's about a hundred times difference between a Sievert and and a rem, but it it's very similar to miles and and kilometers. 

Right? We have our our our, you know, standard American units, and then you have your international units. The "rem" is the American units. That's what we're gonna be going with. 

When we're looking at radiation and dosage, we wanna recognize that there's two differences. And we don't see this with other things on the meter. Right? We don't when we look at oxygen, we don't see percentage and then percentage per hour. 

But when we're looking at radiation, we do. We see a unit of measure that is just gonna be the rem, and, generally, we see that in a total dose. 

When we're looking at dose rate, we're looking at something like millirems or rems per hour. So that's how much I'm getting over a unit time. And the unit of time that we use, obviously, is going to be the the hour. 

It's when we're when we're trying to create and we're gonna get into ALARA in the next slide. But when we start to create the plans and the ideas and even just getting kinda notified that we're in a radiation field, it's understanding these units of measure that's going to be driving our operations. For example, if right off the bat, we walk in and we're getting high readings of of radiation on our meters, we're gonna understand that. We're gonna need to back up and reassess the situation. 

We may have readings that are so high that we need to evac evacuate. 

We can start to implement things like shielding or saying, hey. This is the area that our radiation is gonna be the highest exposures. So we need people to be going into different locations, reroute and reworking. 

And in the same respect, as we start to get lower readings, we understand that that's going to affect the time that we can work in an area. The higher our readings, the shorter our time. The lower our readings, the longer we can work somewhere. And and we're still getting exposed, but we're not getting exposed as much. We're getting less per unit time. 

One of the biggest things that we see on a fairly regular basis, is a misreading of the dose rate, and that looks something along the lines of, hey. I've got five hundred rem, when in reality, you have five hundred micro rem, which if you know anything about radiation, that is a hue that is the difference between every agency in the country showing up to where you are, and nobody really caring what's going on. 

So we take these readings, whether it's gonna be our dose or our dose rate, and we incorporate it into the overall strategy. And the overall strategy is going to be an ALARA strategy, which stands for as low as reasonably achievable. 

We understand that there is nothing that we're gonna be able to do to completely eliminate the radiation exposure on scene. 

There's just not. No amount of shielding is gonna stop everything. No amount of distance is gonna stop everything, and not working in the scene in any way, shape, or form just isn't an option for first responders. So we have to work in a way that takes the levels of radiation that we are getting and brings them down as absolutely low as possible. And we do that through time, distance, and shielding. 

Whether if we're gonna be in a location for a while that that is, emitting a high energy source. Right? We wanna get as much shielding between us and that source as possible. That could look something as simple as a a pop up pool filled with water covering the the the source. 

It could look like standing behind a wall. It could look like performing an action in an area. There there is something between you and the object. And if you don't have a meter on you, you're not gonna know that you're as safe as possible. 

As you're moving around, your time and your distance, all these factors, they are workable in a mathematical point of view, but they're not workable in the sense of, you know, being able to do it on this on the fly. So we understand the principles of time, distance, and shielding, but we use our meter to be able to determine whether or not we are actually in a better location being shielded, if we're in a better location because of distance, and where that time begins and ends for for entering that field. 

Alright. So, a couple of stories, of of radiation stuff. You know, where do we see we we often, will say, you know, oh, it it's no longer really the the the the terrorism threat that we're so concerned about. And from a statistical point of view, that is a hundred percent right. 

Although it still exists and is there, where are some things that we have seen it in everyday response? Well, one of the largest ones that that that we saw when we were working at our job is there's an area in, in New York City that, was a, essentially a wasteland for radiological disposal for a long time. It's pretty much isolated now and is is overgrown into fields. And every summer, it catches on fire. 

And every summer, there's some kind of a radiological response there because the guys are showing up. And when they step off the rigs, their radiation detectors are starting to go off, which if they didn't have that on them, they wouldn't know the areas that they would be dealing with would be a radioactive source, and they would be actually working in a potentially, highly contaminated and become highly exposed, because they just wouldn't know. 

Bobby, I think you're muted, my friend. 

My apologies. 

I had two operations where I think this meter would have been really good for me. 

One was down by Wall Street where, there was a left pack a package left on the street. And one of the things is, like, you know, you you you don't know if it's a a bomb. The bomb guys think it's a bomb thing. The radiation guys think it's a radiation thing. 

The, you know, the the hazmat guys think it's a chemical thing. And it would have been nice to be able to not only just check the box and make sure it's not a radiation thing and do the chemical thing at the same time, but to be able to do it remotely. Like, all the meters at that point in time, this is, like, right after nine eleven, was was you had to put a person and an operator up with the meter. There wasn't, like, really Bluetooth. 

I don't remember Bluetooth coming out till quite a quite a while after, nine eleven. 

But And I cringe at Bluetooth, man. 

Like, I hear Bluetooth, and I can almost never get anything to work when it comes to when it comes to Bluetooth. That's a whole point. Never mind. 

Well, some somebody can't even mute our mics, so there's that. 

No. There's another one we have was was the Troxler gauge. Right? The ground density meters. We had, and and we've seen these things all throughout New York City where it's, like, basically a shoe box where they put it on on the ground, they drive a spike in there, a neutron source comes out from the clamshell, and it measures the density of the ground, and they say you could put a seventy story building up here. 

These call these these kids that bring these things from site to site are in, like, a Toyota Corolla, and you would think it's in some big hardcore box truck and everything. It's just in, like, a Corolla. And and and the kid gets rear ended, and now the box pops open and the neutron source pops open, or maybe it doesn't. And setting this thing up at the proper distance would give you the indication of that. So very handy. 

Well, pipelines, tank cars, railroads, they all use radioactive inspection sources as well, and they're hauled in just a little trailer being towed behind a work truck. And I know I'm the only non Yankee in the room here, but in the south, we had the waste isolation pilot plant down in southern New Mexico. And so all of our radioactive waste across the south was transported from wherever it was at to the southern side of New Mexico. And so we had lots of high level radioactive shipments that were going down the highway. And so you talk about people panicking when they see that. Without without training, nobody has a clue what's going on with those things. 

And that's one of the biggest issues, right, is the is the the it's not even just the lack of training. Right? Most initial technicians and most initial tech programs, they go through radiation in some way, shape, or form. What's really nice about, a design like the EXO 8 is that you have that radiation source in front of you all the time. It's not a separate meter that you have to go and grab. So every time you're turning that meter on, for every run that you're on, for every gas leak that you're on, for every CO leak that you're on, you're also looking at the radiation. 

And ninety percent of the time, there may be nothing, but at least you're seeing the units of measure. You're seeing how things change as you move around. You walk past somebody that just recently had some kind of a a a radiological test done. It's going up. Like, you're you're getting training without and you're getting exposure to the the the device and the technology and the thought process without having to do a separate training. So even without a dedicated day of training or hour of training, you're still being exposed to the, to the the the the dosage, the the the symbols, the just the concepts as a whole. 

That's the same same philosophy as concealed carrying a firearm. Right? It's the one that you can carry. Better to have something than nothing, and I feel like the same philosophy goes for radiation detection. Not everybody's gonna have the budget for some of the high end detection and and and things that can categorize the type of radiation that are coming, but at least having something is better than nothing. 

Right. And I and again, I I'm a big fan of using Geiger counters. You know, the the old school, you know, the tan box, you know, with the with the with the, the tube, you know, and, I'm a fan of it. 

But, you know, the The right tool the right job. 

Right. And and and if I had my druthers and I had the ability of getting something that allowed me to do radiation by using the ALARA principle, right, which is using that distance by connecting it remotely and still getting my readings and not meeting a member close enough to the the the the source that has a problem. I'm gonna take that every every time of the day. It's it's it's a gimme. 

So Geiger Counters are are a thing. I I'm I'm I'm a fan of them. But if I had a tool that allowed me to do remote and check that distance box, I'm in. 

Yeah. So the question becomes, what does good radiation detection actually look like in the field? The one you have. 

Oh, look. I'm up. And I muted my mic. 

So from a detection gap standpoint, as many of you know, I'm a big fan of separating detection and monitoring. And that's I think a lot of people cross those lines over, and then mistakes get made. And I think radiation is the same way. Detecting radiation and monitoring for radiation are two separate things. 

So as a radiation safety officer, one of our jobs out in the field is to figure out what's there, figure out how much of it you can be exposed to over a period of time to keep everybody safe. That's not the level of of detection that we're talking about here. That's monitoring. That's actively figuring out what's there, how much of it's there, how much people are being exposed to. 

What we're talking about when we say detection is merely the recognition that something is there, and I think that starts with training. We touched on it just a little bit earlier, but I think training is the best detector out there. It's recognition of where radiation can exist, and there's lots lots lots of free training available out there. So not only training that you have to go to that you have to take time off of work, but free training that's available online. 

So within the NDPC, which SRTI is a part of, right, the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, we have resources like the the CDP down in Anniston. 

They offer radiation training. The main site though for that is out in Nevada, and that's a resident class. You go out there for a full week. They teach you everything you would ever wanna know and more about radiation detection and monitoring and and how to counter it and recognize it, and you're actually doing that on a on the Nevada security site. 

What a better place. The entire area is radioactive already, so they're not simulating anything. All the radiation that you detect out there is actual live radiation. I've stood in the middle of an atomic crater out there. How often do you get to do that? You know, unless you go to a place like Chernobyl as a tourist, there's not many opportunities for you to experience a site that that has seen that level of radiation. And then they teach you how to monitor for it, you know, how to how to detect it and then monitor for it after the fact. 

In addition to the in person training that's offered all across the nation, there's online training, people like the CDC. The CDC has a a huge repository of free online training that you can log into. And all you need is an email address and confirm that your email address is valid, and you can set through their online training. 

The, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, they have an entire training catalog that's available, and most of the national laboratories will have something similar to that as well. But don't forget about private industry. Some of the best training that's available comes from private industry because there's a freedom that exists in private industry. And I'm trying to be political here, and I know Bobby and Mike are laughing at me right now off camera, but there is. 

There there's a an amount of freedom that's not available when you're having to go through sometimes years worth of certifications in order to get your curriculum out there. And by then, you know, you're a year or two behind. Right? So don't forget about private industry as a resource, for training. 

Most of the time, they will come to you. They will bring all the equipment to you and teach you how to use it. When you purchase any type of monitor, avail yourself of the training that's offered from the the distributor or from the source directly. Blackline is out in the field all the time. 

I know a lot of you that are on this webinar know Doug personally because you've met him out in the field. You've met him at conferences. You've met him when he does presentations. 

That's that's a great resource. He nobody knows their equipment like the person that's selling it and the person that's manufacturing it. So avail yourself of that. If you're writing grants, when you're doing your needs assessment, write in training above and beyond what's already offered by the manufacturer or by the distributor. 

Write in training. That is a valid need. Anytime you get a new piece of equipment, you should be writing in training for that equipment for your entire team. That's how you get the money for the training. 

And I we we get that questions a lot, especially at Searcy, consider we're we're fully grant funded for most of what we do. People ask, you know, how in the world do I get that? Well, when you're when you're applying for these port security grants, when you're you're you're applying for the assistance of firefighter grants and you're asking for equipment, you just write in the need for training. Then you get approved, then you have money to use for training. 

It doesn't come out of your state's budget, it doesn't come out of your county or your city's budget. It comes right out of the budget that's given to you by that grant. So the the excuse that we don't have the money for training, I get that after the fact. But when you're in the planning phase, you should be planning for training. 

Write it in your grants. Figure out how to do it free online. Figure out how to come through the NDBC or or find a way to hire private industry to come out and do it. Most of my certifications I got through the norm lady, n o r m, which is naturally occurring radioactive materials. 

And it's I think that's norm solutions is what her company's called. This is a decade ago. I don't even know if she still exists. But it was a great private resource because she actually worked for the oil fields, which is where most of our work was targeted. 

So she actually come out to our offices, trained all of our technicians, all of the supervisors, anybody, even truck drivers. They got basic training, on how to how to utilize the equipment and recognize the presence of radioactive materials. And then under the WIP program was the same way when we were working with a waste integration pilot plant. They offer training to everybody. 

There's always a way to get training, but you just have to plan ahead. So my my number one thought for detection gaps is the the lack of detection in your own head. I think that's where detection starts, is you recognizing the possibility that there's gonna be a presence of something that's radioactive. 

Beyond that, we we keep talking about equipment, and I and I realize this is a this is a branded webinar. Right? But any any radioactive detection that you can bring out on scene is better than nothing. 

Me, Mike, and Bobby were talking about this offline. 

It's anything you have. Even if it's an old model model three, which is that tan box that Bobby was talking about just a minute ago, get it out there. There's no reason not to. I mean, they're they're super robust, and and all of these solutions are super robust. But even the old old old model threes, which are still used widespread across industry because you can run them over with a truck and they still function just fine, get something out there. 

But the the whole point of this webinar is to show you that there are integrated solutions to where you don't have to bring out another piece of equipment, where where you're not having to have radioactive sources that you calibrate your meter to and and extra training. There are ways to have this integrated into your monitor. So with the EXO, it's right there with you. Everywhere you go, you already have it built in. 

So that way, you're not grabbing an extra piece of equipment. You're not worried about extra maintenance or with, like, the Luddl model three, the big d cell batteries that are getting harder and harder to find. Bring it with you. That way that way you're filling that gap at least from the detection level. 

Now you're not gonna step up and be able to categorize what the radioactive source is with that, but at least you know you're at an elevated risk of being exposed to radiation. 

The slide here says that legacy tools don't meet the complex the threat landscape and this is true because a lot of those older pieces of equipment have no way of of detecting alpha and beta sources. A lot of your nuclear sources will not be picked up by a level model three or some of the older pieces of equipment. There's specific radio frequencies that have to be looked for, for that. So that could be another detection gap if you have a lot of transportation of materials in your area. And that goes right back to what we're talking about. Having the right tool is having a tool, and that's what this solution is is aimed at. See if I can mess up this slide change here real quick. 

From choosing the right detection tools and again, we're talking about detection and not monitoring. So before the crowds go wild and start talking about, well, you know, gamma alone is not gonna tell you what it is. We recognize that. What we're what we're trying to get out there is that everybody needs to have some type of of way of of recognizing the elevated risk. And modern technology, which I'm not a fan of Bluetooth either, but there's other things like the industrial and scientific bands for transmitting materials, cellular four gs, satellite. 

These are all becoming more and more reliable as time goes on to the point at which I would trust my life to them if I was out in the field still. I spent most of my career in the field from I used to work in Russia. I worked down in the Caribbean. Back then, there's no way. 

I wouldn't trust a radio for anything. I would trust radio comms, but that was about it. But times have changed. Times have changed a lot since I was out in the field. 

I've been here with SIRSSE for almost eleven years now, and technology has grown by leaps and leaps and bounds. I mean, we're using things like drones to detect radiation now. Right? And we're we're getting extremely reliable with those. 

We have thermal imagers that attach to our phones, that actually attach to the back of your phone, which is this this is a case for one. I can actually plug a thermal imager into the back of my phones, and and that same advancement technology is what we're talking about in this webinar. Now we're integrating radiation detection into what we already use every day. The area monitors that we set up on every single incident, now we can have a gamma meter inside there. 

When you're doing your evaluation, again, make sure that you're you're making room for training. Make sure that you're you're targeting that equipment to the right part of your response. 

You know, you don't want you don't need this on every single rig, you know, if if it's a if it's an aerial that's gonna go out to a house fire every day, there's probably not as big of a need. So save your budget for people that are actually gonna respond in areas where it is. But if you do have the budget, it's not a bad idea to have it everywhere. 

Just make sure that the solution is understood. 

So broader and not just the the EXO, which is extremely easy to use because of the web portal that it utilizes. 

Make sure that whatever whatever you choose, is easy to use, easy to understand in the field, and and isn't so overly complicated that everybody can use it. So I'm gonna pass it off for the sales pitch part of this because I'm a terrible salesman as you can tell. I'm gonna pass it off to Bill here, to take over, for the the sales pitch side of things. Bill, take it away. 

Thanks, Brandon. 

1. So when you responded to an incident involving radiation, speed and clarity are everything You need to know, is the environment safe?

Where's the threat coming from? 

How long can we safe safely stay here, and what's changing minute by minute? 

That's what EXO 8 Gamma is built to support. It's not about new tech for the state sake of tech. It's about making your job safer, faster, and less uncertain, especially when time is short and the risks are inevitable. 

It helps to bring structure to chaos. 

You can place it, power it on, and focus on your task, knowing that real time readings are being captured, shared, and acted on, whether you're in the field or someone's coordinating from the command center. 

It helps, reduce cognitive load. You don't have to think about calibration or battery status or whether the data is getting through. The system's designed to work where and when you need it. So your attention stays on the response, not the device. 

It also helps protect your crew after the event, the data lives on, not just as a report, but as a tool for learning. What exposure levels were logged? How quickly was the threat identified? 

What can we do better next time? In the end, this is about giving you confidence, confidence that you're seeing what you need to see, acting when you need to act, and keeping your people as safe as possible in unpredictable situations. 

When it comes to radiation, the sooner you detect it and the further back you can do that from, the safer your response becomes. 

If the sensor isn't always on, you're you risk missing something, maybe the one moment when a radiation source passes by. 

This monitor is always working. No gaps, no blind spots, and it reacts the moment things change. So you're not left wondering what just happened, getting delayed data or last minute alarms. It also picks up lower level radiation that could otherwise go unnoticed, giving you an earlier heads up before things get worse. These capabilities aren't about specs. They're about giving you more time, more clarity, and fewer surprises when radiation is involved. One of the biggest challenges in any emergency, whether it involves radiation, gas, or an unknown threat, is visibility. 

Blackline brings that visibility into focus by turning live field data into real time insight for both responders and command. 

This means incident command can make faster, more informed decisions, whether that's triggering evaluate evacuations for selecting for select responders or the public or coordinating response across agencies at the local state or federal level. 

Every everyone operates from the same shared picture. 

And after the scene clears, that same data helps teams look back, not just at what happened, but how they responded. 

It becomes a tool for learning, improving protocols, and strengthening safety culture. It's about helping responders and commands stay one step ahead with clarity when seconds matter. 

Today, we walked through a lot, and we did it with very intentional focus to equip you with real knowledge, not just awareness. 

We explored how radiation behaves differently than other threats, silent, invisible, and often misunderstood. 

We looked at how exposure happens, how it's measured, and how crucial it is to understand not just the hazard, but the context it's unfolding in. We talked through how early recognition, even without a detector, can shape the outcome of the scene and how decisions around time, distance, and intensity can mean the difference between protection and exposure. 

We examined what's often missing, the training, the tools, the visibility, and we looked at how modern technology, when done right, doesn't get in your way. It instead allows you to focus on what matters, the safety of your crew and the people you're protecting. 

If there's one thing we hope you take away from today, it's this. Radiation doesn't have to be a mystery. With the right mindset, foundational knowledge, and the right tools, it becomes another risk you're fully prepared to manage. So with that, we'd love to open it up. What's on your mind? What challenges are you facing? What questions do you have? 

Bill, thank you so much. And and all the the guys who joined us today, thank you so much for this great presentation. A lot of good questions, a lot of good feedback about the topic. Right? And, again, I think, you know, just a lot of very basic insight into something that's that high, risk, low frequency type of event. So if you do have any questions, please do send them in. We'll start getting to those here in a second. 

We already have a few to to to ask the, the panelists. But, if you do have any more questions, go ahead and send those in. We'll get to them here in just a second. So, Bobby, I think this kinda goes back to you from the start. 

Mike, maybe it was you, but it says, landfills and waste disposal areas, can be a bigger source of gamma radiation. Correct? And and I think that depends on where you are. This this question, is is The for something in the industry side. 

Yeah. The the answer to that is actually not as much as you think. 

While, you know, you have to remember that the area that that I was referring to, you know, they were they were making parts in World War one and World War two back before they even realized that radiation was a hazard. You know, you had your you had your, your, you know, your your your girls licking paintbrushes that were contaminated with radioactive Of course. 

It was really before they understood. 

Now Now I think federal regulation generally says that anything anything white background can't go into a landfill. 

And I don't know of a landfill or a scrap yard that doesn't have gamma, detection, as you go through it. So, it's actually something we know a little bit about because for a long time, we responded to a tremendous number of garbage trucks that had radioactive substances in them. 

So And mostly mostly false alarms. 

The stuff that we shipped in from the oil field, we we'd have sections we'd just one section of eight foot pipe would set off the alarms. That's that's it. A section of oil filled pipe. And then you come in and do the assessment, and you realize that it's not it's not actually dangerous. But, the the detectors at landfills are some of the best. I mean, they're better than the ones at Dallas Cowboys Stadium. 

Just about, I mean, they are they are not joking around about not taking anything radiological into a landfill. 

Nope. 

Great point. And I've actually sent them set them up. I I did a story about Arlington Fire at Cowboys Stadium a few years ago when I first moved to Texas. I had no idea of the depth that they went into with the events before, and then I saw that when I went down to Nashville Firehouse Expo, they had a, they had a Titans game and was able to go through as they were setting up all their equipment, before the game. Really, you know, if you don't know that kind of stuff, there's a lot of work done, a lot of work that's being set out to really monitor and ensure the safety of the, the fans, you know, the players, and and everybody else that's involved. 

I knew it was going on, but it's an hours long event, just to get stuff in every corner of the stadium on the outside. Just a fascinating observation, opportunity for me there. 

So if you wanna if you wanna learn how to run a multithreat environment, talk to Arlington Fire Department. There's nobody that handles more threats than them because of because of all the major stadiums that are spread out there. And I saw a couple of folks here from the Dallas area. I'm not sure if I I have any of the Arlington guys on because there's, like, a hundred people on the webinar right now. But reach out to those guys. I mean, they do every level of threat that you can think of, and they got FIFA coming up too. So now they're even they're they're expanding onto the capabilities that they normally have. 

Yeah. That's a great organization. 

By the way. 

Awesome. Thank you. 

By the way. 

Next question here is the ALARA principles that were mentioned earlier, time, distance, and shielding. In fast moving emergencies, what are some practical tips for teams to apply ALARA, without having to slow down their overall response? 

You know, they we always had that discussion which one of the three is the most important, the time, distance, or shielding. And if I had if I had my my choice, I would pick the distance. 

We use that thing that, the inverse square rule where, every time you double, you quarter every time you double your distance, you quarter your dosage. 

So it falls off very, very quickly. So if I would say in order to you you wanna be able to you wanna have a a a detector that is big enough to pick it up from a good distance away to keep safety up paramount. 

I would And the only way you're gonna the only way you're gonna allow for a smooth operation, to be honest with you, is training. 

Because no matter what you have, if you get off the rig and your detector starts going off, if you're not trained in understanding what that meter is telling you, you're gonna either freeze up or not make the right decision. So while, you know, a meter like this can help you detect that something is there, give you an idea of of the level of danger that you're putting yourself in so you can do that very quick risk reward analysis. If you don't have the training to understand how to operate, it's it's completely to the nothing. Nothing. 

That's what I was gonna get into too. It depends on whether you're there for that response or not. If you're not there for the radio radiological response, then I would say distance is your friend. Right? 

Like, stay as far away as you possibly can. But when we're actually responding to it, time is the only thing that we can use in most cases. Because I can't wear a giant lead suit when I walk into these radioactive tanks to clean them. Right? 

So we use time, and that's what your radiation safety officer does, is calculate the amount of time that you could be exposed to that, how much downtime you need throughout the day, on and on. So I would say time is your friend if you're the actual one responding to the the radiological source. Distance is your is your best friend if you're not there to respond to the radiological source. 

Okay. Thanks, guys. Next question here is how can integrating real time radiation detection, into an incident command center or operations change the way decisions are being made during an active emergency? And again, like you all mentioned, I mean, technology has come so far. How do you take that opportunity to to to really go real time with everything? Everybody's on the same page when we get go. 

Well, how does it The biggest help you to be able to slow everything down down. 

Go ahead, Brandon. Go ahead, Brandon. 

Sorry. I didn't mean to step over the top of you there. I my hope would be that it doesn't slow everything down because if if people start to see two to three times background, which is perfectly normal in a lot of cases, if command sees that before somebody is there to explain why, there's a good chance that it could shut down. So training not only for your responders, but enough training for your command to not panic and not shut things down. 

And think about it from a life safety perspective instead of the the knee jerk reaction to pull everybody out. Sorry. Go ahead. 

Assuming that everybody has good training like like Brandon just said, You know, in a large scale incident and where things are constantly, you know, moving or flexing, let's say we had a a dirty bomb incident or we did have some kind of transportation incident in which there was airborne contamination, That real time understanding of what is happening in the big picture, can help drive the operation forward very, very quickly and make effective momentary decisions that could quite literally alter, you know, the way the outcome of the operation goes. 

I would, like to throw one more thing on there is that, I I've heard this a lot of times during either training or conference or whatever. It's like people say, well, I can just put on a radiation meter. Once I make sure that we don't have radiation, I can move on with the rest of the operations. But the thing is is that scenes are dynamic. You know, what originally started as a chemical thing, a car drives by or, you know, a a a car accident happens in proximity and now you do have a radiation issue, where if you don't have that radiation monitor constantly picking up on evolving things over time, then you won't know that a new, a new problem just popped up. So that's one of the nice things that you can set and forget this thing and just walk away and operate. But if things change, it'll alert you to that going forward. 

Thanks, guys. Great great insight. Next question here. 

For teams with limited training on radiation, what's the best place to start, in terms of building confidence and especially competence, when it comes to responding to radiological threats. 

Hire the hazmat guys. 

Well, I would agree That's not a question from them. 

I would agree with that a hundred percent, but there's also, you know, there's a lot of, the the the the federal, there's some federal training out there, like, going out to to New Mexico. You know, I would say if there's Better. You could do anything. Man, go to go to New Mexico. Go do that training that the federal government gives. It is so absolutely unbelievable. 

Yes. We give, you know, phenomenal training as well, I think, personal opinion. 

But how do you get how do you start to feel confident? Well, you can start to feel confident with things like ALARA even just taking small, small things around the firehouse or around the the the I say firehouse because that that was my home base. But wherever you're working, there's radiological substances everywhere. And it doesn't have to be an insanely strong source to start to get an idea of time, distance, shielding. 

The walls of our firehouse had really old tile that had they were giving off radioactive sources. And if we wanted to go play with time, distance, and shielding, we just had to take a meter and put it up to the wall. Put a piece of paper in. Put two pieces of paper in. Walk away from the wall. 

You know, like, so you can do all of these principles on a very low level and get an idea and an understanding of what that meter is trying to tell you trying to tell you. 

Great. Okay. Thanks, guys. Brandon, any, other additional insight for this one? 

Sorry. I mean, I listed a lot of that in in my two slides there about the free training that's available online through CDC, through, like, Department of Energy. We're currently testing the Atlas transport, which is a, spin nuclear fuel transport for the rail. 

Their office has a tremendous amount of free training available online. And then my my thought process, if I was out there trying to create my own program, would be to take what I can learn online for free, pull that information out into my own presentation, and then create my own little hour long awareness level, presentation out of what's already publicly available. 

You. Next question, direct for the EXO 8. What types of radiation does it detect? 

I believe it does it does I know it does gamma. It does gamma very good, and the beauty of the gamma is the resolution of it. I believe I said it was, like, zero to two hundred and two hundred thousand micro rem, which is a a very robust span. 

I like that it does to one micro resolution. So that's a you you're gonna pick up things from in small quantities all the way up to rather large quantities at very granular levels. 

It's it's good. It's it's a it's a very accurate device. 

Okay. Bill, anything else to add to that? 

As far as the what what it's what the, exclamation I guess, in addition to obviously, you have eight, eight sensors as well, gas sensors that you can utilize with the gamma. 

So Okay. Alright. Thank you. 

So now, next question regarding, the device is, what is the radiation field of view? My understanding is most crystals have to be pointed in the direction of the radiation source. Does there have to be a cone view, a 180-degree, hundred and or 360 degree? 

How far out and distance, will it detect? 

Like, thanks from experience. It's not an unlimited range, but it depends on the power of the source for any sensor that's out there. And the comb view is because of the shielding aspect of of what we were talking about in in ALARA. 

You know, you wanna be as low as recently possible. And then if you could do that through shielding, let's do that. But that's what happens to the meter is if it's if it's pointed away, then all the the shielding inside the sensor itself keeps it from reading anything. That's no different than any other monitor, though. 

But I mean But as for the Correct me if I'm wrong. 

It's when we talk about things like, you know, making sure it's lined up in the cone and and all that other stuff with the sensor, we're talking about the most accurate reading possible. Right? You're still going to get like, if if I have this this meter hanging on my, hanging on my chest and I get out of the rig and I'm in a radiation field, it's going to pick up the fact that I'm there. Right? 

Like, shielding doesn't shield a hundred percent. So even though you you know, in order to get a really accurate reading, you wanna be on the the the the perfect spot, the perfect angle, that's great for accurate reading. At least as far as I'm concerned for first responders, many of the times, I just wanna know, do I have a low field, high field, medium field? How quickly is this coming at me roundabout? 

Right? If I if I've got if my meter is telling me it's one rem per hour and I don't have it pointed just right and it's actually one point two rems per hour, well, that notification that I'm in a high field, that point two doesn't really matter to me. I want the immediate notification that I'm there. I wanna know that I'm approaching something that is that is is getting increasingly more dangerous as I go on. 

Well, one of the one of the things is the, is the EXO doesn't really have a cone. It it's it's a three sixty. It's a it's a spherical, so it can pick up an older right now, I will say that there is a battery in there, and that is what they in the industry, it's shielding. So, the battery's gonna kind of knock down that energy a wee bit, but the rest of it, it picks up pretty well. It's pretty much three sixty minus the battery spot. 

So turn the device so the battery's away from it, and you're pretty good. 

Alright. Great. Thanks, guys. 

Earlier, you mentioned that the the multithreat environment such as gas, chemical, radiation are becoming more and more common. How does the advanced technology help manage these different layered threats, more effectively than something that we had just a few years ago? 

I love this because, if the more capabilities I can put in the same package is even it's better. Right? If I can do eight sensors plus RAD for over a hundred hours and have remote capabilities, Like, it's it's a hard argument saying, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna go to these old school technologies, and just because I have them, I mean, it's it's definitely something new to check out. 

Well, the added the added problem of having multiple meters to worry about, multiple manufacturers to mail them off to for service, multiple in the case of radiation on most radiation meters, you gotta mail them back to the the manufacturer for calibration. 

Having everything all in one with one servicer is a huge deal, you know, except for the teams that are gonna do monitoring, which we talked about earlier. But, I mean, having everything all in in in one in one place through one web portal that anybody anywhere can view on their phone, on a website, on a tablet. My gosh. The level of information that we have now is is almost scary the other way around. 

Whereas before, we didn't have enough information to make an educated decision. I think the big worry now is that there's too much information and people start to panic about the stuff they don't know. But that's a good thing. We can train that out of the of the of the problem pool. 

1.  

Alright. Next question here is how would you recommend starting a radiation awareness, program or some good initial hands on training drills, for a smaller department, maybe twenty five members combination. 

They have no real hazmat or heavy rescue capabilities. 

I would say I would say take the online stuff. It's free. 

It it doesn't require anybody to leave. And and if you're a smaller apartment, I imagine that you have some mixed Volleys and and Pave Guys. You don't have to worry about them going away. Just you're just sitting down at a computer taking some of the awareness stuff, and build your build your catalog off of some of the sources that I mentioned, and there's probably way more out there. 

But, I would say that's the not to step on anybody's toes who's trying to sell something here, but, I think from for a a small department, especially mixed departments where you have guys that have other jobs, I think setting down and creating that catalog of the free stuff that's available online, and saying, hey. Look. We can get you eight hours of training, but you're gonna go to, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's website, and you're gonna take this one because it's really good. You're gonna jump over here to the Department of Energy, and you're gonna do this one. 

You're gonna jump on to the CDP's website, and you're gonna take this online one. I think that's the best way to build it because when it's free and it you get higher quality of training that way than you would if you tried to create your own. 

Find sources in your area. Like, if you're if you're a small department, if you have the the radiation detection, find maybe there's a place that's doing, you know, you got a cardiologist somewhere in your, in your first two area, they're gonna be able to be like, yeah. We've got stuff here. So you can go knock on their door and be like, hey. Can we try just detecting some stuff here and there? There's all sorts of little things that you can do. 

Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Brandon. 

Next question is, are there any special considerations I should have as a fire inspector, aside from seeing a door in a hospital with a radiation warning sign? 

What should I know? I don't carry any sort of detection devices on me. 

If you're going to a hospital with radiation, you should be having a detector. Yeah. 

We're we're past that point, guys. 

Yeah. Special consideration. 

I don't think there are special considerations for that. 

I think it's, I think if you don't have a detector on you, you don't know. That's your special consideration. 

Yeah. Not just hospitals. If you're going to weld shops, if you're going to manufacturing plants, a lot of them use radioactive sources for inspection. And wind towers, we have Colorado wind that's just south of us here in Pueblo, and they use a lot of radioactive inspection equipment. 

If you're going to any of these types of places, not just hospitals, there's there's lots of places that use uses, radiological inspection sources. 

You should have some type of detection. You can get the Excel is probably a little large for a fire inspector to carry around, but there there's personal dosimeters you can buy that are extremely cheap, and and you just replace them every two years. You should have at least something like that. 

Thanks, guys. And, last question here is, many teams are still relying on the old Kiger counters. So, what are some of the biggest limitations these tools have, for today's responders that they should be aware of before they're getting off the rigs? 

Do you find any D cell batteries? 

Yeah. That's a good point. D cells and lantern batteries are hard to come by, but, resolution. I would say probably resolution is gonna be my number one issue with it, is that, it it's kind of a chunky gradient, whereas if you get something that is one micron micro, that's incredible resolution. So, that's a big plus for me. 

I would say it's understanding the tools in the toolbox. Right? Like, you know, they have different functions. They have different missions. They have different purposes for using. 

So, you know, you may have the Ludlums, but they're not attached to you when you're getting out of the rig, like, like, a four gas has been or five gas has been. They're not they're they're they're phenomenal for something like TI indexing. Right? I would wanna make sure I had a a more specific type of, radiological detection to do TI indexing. 

I would want this with me when I get off the rig to let me know I'm walking into a field and to give me basic idea of how things are going. If I had a whole team or a whole department and everybody's got one of these, I've got a big picture point of view by being able to go on to the portal and look through the portal, see what the scene looks like. That you can't do with the old style radiological detectors. So it there are tools in the toolbox. 

Use the right tool for the right job. 

And know how to use your tool. 

Great. 

Alright, guys. Well, thank you again so much for for, you know, today's presentation. A lot of great questions that we answered and and just the insight that you shared. And, again, I think overall that that awareness level has been brought up so high today. This this was phenomenal. 

So a big shout out and thank you to, Blackline Safety for sponsoring this. Bill Sundstrom, Mike Monaco, Bobby Salveson, and Brandon Dean Morris for being on today's program. Gentlemen, thank you. And, again, thank you to Blackline Safety for this program. If you did miss any portion of it, if you went on a run or you got in late from going on a call, the archive will be available in, twenty four hours or less at the same, link that you logged on, to join us today. And make sure you share this with some of your, colleagues in other stations or other departments in the area so that you're all on a on a level, planning page.

Thank you.