Congratulations to the 6 Billerica Firefighters who completed the IAFF Hazardous Materials Technician training held in Boston this past week. This 80 hour training includes offensive procedures for mitigation of hazardous materials spills, leaks and exposures. Topics include chemistry, detection devices, advanced recognition and identification, pre-incident planning, incident management, scene evaluation and termination, terrorism, toxicology, medical surveillance, emergency care, PPE usage and limitations, and decontamination. Technician level training exceeds the required operational level training that all fire fighter recruits receive. With the addition of these 6 new HazMat techs, the Billerica Fire Department’s HazMat Response Team consists of 47 technicians.