O’Brien County, Iowa — Recently O’Brien County Emergency Management entered into a contract with the Sioux City Fire Department’s HazMat (Hazardous Materials) Team to help O’Brien County with serious HazMat situations throughout the County.
O’Brien County Emergency Management Coordinator Jared Johnson tells KIWA that the County is required to have such an agreement in place.
Johnson talks about an added feature that’s included in the new contract.
The new contract also includes, what Johnson calls, an “Outreach” feature.
He says the requirement to have a HazMat Contract is due to the difficulty and cost that a county the size of O’Brien would face in building and maintaining it’s own HazMat Team.
Johnson talks about the kind of events that would require the call-out of the Sioux City Fire Department HazMat Team to come to O’Brien County.
He says the State of Iowa also has a HazMat Response Team that can respond to any county that has a HazMat Contract in force, such as the one between O’Brien County and the Sioux City Fire Department.
The new 10-year contract between O’Brien County Emergency Management and the Sioux City Fire Department HazMat Team will go into effect on July 1st of this year, and calls for a fee based upon the county’s population.
