Zoning & Land Regulation Committee - meeting_emergency

Call this meeting to order.

I have printed.

I'm gonna mute my video, though, if you're gonna keep my big head up on that screen.

He's worried about opening his big head on the screen. I don't know. I said

I'm gonna mute my video if you keep my

big head up on the

TV screen, like, all over that back wall. Oh, you look look great. I won't even tell you how many other TVs you're on in this room. It seems a lot. Alright. Our first agenda item, duration of minutes. Hopefully, people got a chance to take a look at the minutes. Any concerns or questions from those minutes?

Fourteen. Okay. Are you looking for a

motion to approve the October minutes? I was just gonna say, can I get a motion for approval? I'll second. Moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye or signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Sounds like we have minutes from October. But delay this long enough, maybe our chair won't make it. However, we do have a presentation today. I don't have any information about the presentation. So if someone is able to introduce the presenter

Would you

like to introduce yourself and just ask

yourself? Okay.

I turn the floor over to you.

Somebody going to slide? Yep. You want me to there or stand in the podium?

Yeah. I guess our camera's right here. So if I'd be able to put it face to the voice.

I don't know if slide. I don't how to make it, like, slide. I think this might be as it goes.

Alright.

Does

that work? Okay.

I have everybody else. K.

Alright.

We're gonna do a basic outreach today. This is a general. So

Sorry. Did I go?

No. No. This is it. Okay. My department is called the Chemical Emergency Response Laboratory, but we actually go by it different internationally response effort for chemical threats to the LRNC. So back in the late night, Japan recruited college students to synthesize serum, which leased it to the Tokyo subway system. When this happened, their hospital systems, their emergency responders were completely overwhelmed. Got 10,000 people rushed their hospitals, completely overwhelmed the emergency response system. And most importantly, at that point in time, there wasn't any testing capability even exposure to chemical. Right?

There. So our government here in that situation, federal government didn't know that. We're gonna be in the same boat here. If we have a large scale chemical exposure event, we're also exposed. They're gonna be overwhelmed. Our hospitals are gonna be overwhelmed, and we don't have anything to actually test and address these medical exposure events. So they think about six thousand people were exposed to serum, but nobody knows because there wasn't any. So they start the laboratory response network, the LRN. There's different types of LRN. There's LRNB for biological threats. They can fix it by the right side. They do a lot of clinical outreach. There's LRNC for chemical threats. That's my group. There's LRNR for.

Historically, that's a paper that have stood up more formally under the CDC. So we are supported entirely by the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Agreement or the. We are used to the FED. Yep. So your LRN capabilities fall under the FED. So we are the LRN C supply group, the LRN C program for the state of Wisconsin. The CDC funds an LRN in every state in the country, and we get classified based on response capability level. They're either a level one, two, or three chemical response lab. Level three labs, they don't do any human exposure testing. Primarily, our mission is to act as a hospital lab to be able to perform high complexity, accredited human exposure for different.

That's pretty expensive capability to maintain. It's gonna less regulated. You have to have license testing. Definitely go into your doctor and getting an actual for your patient testing. That's what we're doing provide patient results.

That's really expensive to meet the benefit of capability of those accreditation of the report. So level threes, they just maintain the ability to do packaging and shipping of clinical specimens and get those sent out to a level one, two lab for the CDC depending on what that need is. Level two labs, they can have less stable funding, smaller staffing, but they do have chemical exposure to testing capability, hopefully, within our states. Level ones have the greatest preparedness and response capability outside of the CDC. There are 10 level one labs in the country. Utah one of those. We can speak that up on the map there. There are 10 level one labs. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, nice solid block up north here, right, on response capability. So we have the highest capability.

We are expected to maintain twenty four seven surge capacity support or CDC. So if there's a large scale national event, samples can be sent to us if it's gonna exceed their capacity, or if we are the more locally ready resource that can accept those patient samples, we can stand up within twenty four hours of notification. And I'll tell you, our program here in Westaff, we get the fastest response time in the country. We can be stood up within four hours, usually two hours. So if it's Christmas Eve at 2AM, it might take me two hours to get an analyst into the lab and have instruments spun up.

But when we have these chemical threat events, it's gonna be longer than two hours for somebody to get that patient sample ready and walking in our door. But we have a very fast response time here in Wisconsin. Next slide, please. So what can we do? This is really important for our health care partners and our emergency manager partners. So we have kind of two different parts of our mission. We've got this clinical response mission, our ability to support patient management and that human exposure testing need. We also have our not response agents. I'll talk about both of those and why those are important in an chemical response landscape. So when it comes to clinical studies, what what can we do?

We have twenty four seven instant responsibility for public health events with these human exposures. We are clinically accredited. We are CLIA licensed licensed and may have a College of American Pathologists accreditation on all of our clinical methods. That means we can provide a test result to a physician to make patient care determinations off of. That's a pretty important thing to be able to do when you have the exposures. You can't just run a patient sample, a blood or urine sample. You have to be less than credited to do so, and we maintain that capability in. We also maintain our certifications to be able to do clinical packaging. Packaging is shipping of specimens. So if there is a large scale event, CDC has dedicated protocols for how you have to send them those patient samples.

We maintain that capability for our states. If a hospital is overwhelmed, it can come to us. We'll be that clearinghouse to get it recapped and shipped off according to protocols and procedures so that it's acceptable to be safe. We are also really good at being a preparedness program. So how can we focus on doing the health care lane on this? We're here to talk some social fitness exercises. So if you want to do, like, a suction based exercise, functional growth, we could do that together. Let's come up with a chemical exposure event that would be relevant for your community, and let's talk through what does that look like for you to activate us, for us to be able to test location samples, help support your community needs, and get those results turned around. We do exercise preparedness. We do all of this work for free.

It's captured under our grant funding. So if you're interested, and hopefully you're interested Duranda Mhmm. In doing an exposure exercise with us, this is an area I'd like to grow more. So I'm actually looking for some health care partner to do, say, a chem pack exposure exercise, chem pack or nerve agent exposure with us this year. So if that beats your interest, please reach out to me. Love you again. So what can we do? Well, clinical test ordering is really important. This can sometimes be a challenge for our law enforcement partners. We may have a chemical that I'll talk to an office, and they're like, it's okay. I'll have a pee in a cup, and I'll bring it over to you. And it's like, oh, sorry, sir. We can't do that. You have to have physician authorization to do clinical testing. So that means ER doctor.

It may be one of the MDs at the state level or county level. There are different physicians, and you have an MPI number that is active You work to authorize clinical testing with us. We must consent to a testing request. So we are not just a menu order lab where you can send us samples. We must we must request our testing support, and we do have the ability to say no. So if it doesn't fall in the support of our mission, it's not a clinical test that we have available. We will say no to those testing. It doesn't need to fall under our LRNC mission to support public health and safety. And we are not a stat lab, so we're not open twenty four seven at a state public health lab. We tend to have the same difference hours, nine to five, same hours per serving.

Migrant can stand up. If we have that, we activate it. We'll pull staff in, and we will run for that twenty four seven capacity as needed. But in general, we're not hanging out there and getting over that for you to just bring us a lot of samples. If you need to call us, we'll. And fee for service, there are type where we may have to charge for testing. I'll actually show you the piece of that. But in general, if it's gonna be a chemical threat event or an exposure event that's hard to deal in our community, we are not charging for our services. We'll be able to accept those patient samples in front of them. Next slide, please.

So here's our chemical threat agents poster. So this is actually available. We highly recommend that this is posted in ERs in your hospital, community clinics, where you may have patients presenting after a chemical threat event. It is a fillable PDF. You can email me, and I'll send you a copy. It's got a back side to it that talks about how you can activate us. Our fire department hazmat teams, our state asset hazmat teams in the state carry this as well, and this is a busy work thing for any EMS individuals who may be the person responding to a large scale event or even a small scale event. You may have been probably an exposure, or we do probably look at that for the resources available. This RET agent poster is really handy to be aware of. Next slide.

Here's our CBC packaging and shipping requirements for chemical prep samples. It's a very spec specific protocol. So we will actually work into drills and exercises with our hospital lab partners on these events where they can practice actually packaging and sending us those patient samples like we were gonna send it off to CDC. So if you're anybody in that community and you'd like to do a short little drill to do some skills work, we can do this together. Please reach out. We don't have to do that again. We can do a chem pack related form. Next slide, please. How do we support our first responders? So we've got that clinical exposure side that we talked about at our mission.

Let's talk about that on our clinical side. We do a lot of work with our state asset. Sometimes we work with our on technician groups in general. We don't work with explosives, but we there is a technical resource if that's needed locally. But mostly, we're working with the fire departments. So how do we help support them rather than twenty four seven support for public health, environmental testing, and basic incident response. So we have our state asset, hazmat team. They need to deploy in the middle of the night, and they have some questions maybe on some of their reach or some of their technical devices, and they're like, hey. What do you think of this spectroscopy? We're a local technical resource that they can call in the middle of the night, and we will look at that data with them and help make some recommendations or decisions.

So if you have firefighters doing FTIR around spectroscopy, do you want a firefighter interpreting that data? Probably not. Do you want a a chemist like myself or my colleague, Jason, looking at it? Yeah. You probably do. We're gonna look at that together. We're gonna say, yeah. You know what? That looks like a reasonable match based on your other information. This seems reasonable. You think it'd be reasonable to de escalate it. We're not command, but we provide that technical resource. Or there's times we look at it, we're gonna say, oh, no. I there's something going on here. I think we've reached the limits of this capability.

Why don't we look at some formal sample in the lab? And we can help figure out the right lab pathway, whether it's us or a crime lab or a forensic lab, to then move that sample and provide better information for the community. We do unknown substance identification. So in general, we do not accept samples from members of the public. It has to come to us through a trusted public agency resource. Usually, that's gonna be the state asset hazmat teams. It may be through law enforcement like FBI. Occasionally, local law enforcement. Typically, it's gonna come to up from to us from a fire department hazmat team, sometimes public health emergency management. You'll see why it usually comes to us from a state asset hazmat team, though, in a minute.

So our first responders may be able to do some of that on scene assessment, but if we still don't know what it is and there's still that threat or public health and safety concern, we can be that initial laboratory resource to test to try to get our decision makers, our local and state decision makers, some information that that you make a decision. You allow re occupancy of that building. You know, you may need to recommend that there needs to be a high back unit company. A private contractor needs to come in. You may need some information about, well, what were we dealing with in that facility?

Do we be having a bank with a white powder letter? You have to know what is this potentially so we can make the recommendations to allow reopening that business or for the reoccupancy of that dwelling? And we may need stand up local medical management for any workers exposed or individuals that may have been exposed for public health needs to be involved, monitoring these types of exposed So we can be there to help with that unknown identification. Understand we are not a crime lab. We are not a forensic lab. It's not that we're not gonna

do go to work or that our work won't

for us in part if it needs to go there. My job is to help our state normal decision makers and our first responders with that initial assessment of the sample to figure out what are we dealing with so you can make good decisions, and we can keep things going. They can leave our lab and go for further testing. But in general, we don't wanna wait eight months, twelve months, two years for a forensic lab to get back to you. You need to know now. So I like to joke that Raj is your first stop or your last resort. In general, our hazmat testing is free. So if the fire department hazmat teams are bringing us samples, we did not charge our first responders. Again, they have to ask us, though, if you have to consent. Next slide, please.

I'm saying hard to hear, so you might need to talk just a little bit louder. That's the first time it's ever been So what don't we do for our first responders? The lab does not do radiation and explosives, so we're dealing with unknown substance and potentially credible threat events. And I want everyone to understand when we're talking about credible threat, a lot of times people think like FBI, law enforcement, that malicious intent event. A credible threat is not just those types of events.

They're also a public health threat, an environmental threat, an occupational threat. It can be a credible threat within other lanes of response community. And when you think about true unknowns and that threat component, the first two things, if it's hot or it's gonna blow, should that move from the hot zone? Absolutely not. Don't bring that to me. Don't put it in some law officer's vehicle. Send it down to the lab. I'm gonna leave you in the parking lot and call bomb squad. So we do have clearance requirements. There are certain things that need to be screened and ruled out on scene, and now you can see why the hazmat teams are the resource that usually brings us the sample.

They're gonna go through and do their synaptic assessment, bring in bomb squads for consultation. But if we hit one of those trigger points, that's a different response process. This doesn't need to come to us. Radiant explosives have their own dedicated response pathway. So we we need your help to keep us safe. We're good scientists. We're good lab people. But I have a white lab coat. Actually, I have a blue lab coat. My blue lab coat differentiates me from the other scientists. Mason and I both have a blue lab coat. We have three seconds of flash protection with a blue lab coat. My safety shower is six seconds away. So we need your help to keep us safe in the laboratory. So we want these unknown substances to be screened properly on scene by a qualified hazmat resource before they're coming into us.

And you have to contact us ahead of time. We must consent to testing. I'm gonna ask you some basic questions. Who's requesting it? Greg needs to be a trusted public partner. What are you requesting us to do? What is going on? Why do you want us to test? And how are you gonna use our information? If somebody says, Well, we wanna put the bad guy away, that's not what our testing is here for.

But if we have signs and symptoms of exposure, if you're saying we need to figure out what this is so we can set up medical management, I need to figure out whether or not I can reopen this school, yes, those are boxes that we may then consent to test. There are also may be times where samples and incidents fall under another agency's jurisdiction. There's a lot of different types of labs out there, my friends. So you want to call us first. Just show up in our lobby. Call us first because we may say, hey. You know what? Actually, this doesn't come to us. Or you know what? We really need to get that VR that will still get better involved.

This is really kind of over their lane. It's not that we may not be able to help you, but we really need to get those partners online before we can consent to anything. You don't need to know what all those places out there. You just need to make that phone call. Let's get the right response partners all together on a collaboration call, and let's make sure it's gonna go in the right direction so you get the best information possible, again, to make the right decisions. Next slide, please. All right, so here's a little bit about our training and outreach program. We have one of the top outreach programs for first responders in the country. My group does about 20 outreach sessions and training events a year, mostly, where we're out there working with the fire departments. We do about two exercises per quarter.

So if you're interested in including an LRN exercise in an exercise event that you might be planning, you loved it, get added as an inject. It doesn't need to be like this huge lab thing that encompasses everything. Include us as a call, just that basic phone call, hey, I'm gonna reach out to the LRN lab. Adding us to your exercise like that counts towards our CDC metrics, so we have to report to CDC that we're doing this work. This shows them that you guys value having an LRN in your community to be able to support you. You're including us in your exercises. You know we exist. You know how to call us. So if you're ever interested in including us in something, give me a call. I'm happy to give you some ideas.

We can work our way into it. It can be a less than a two minute thing in your exercise, but it really helps us to maintain these resources. Next slide, please. Here's our one more up. All right, okay. So here's kind of our outreach menu that we have. You're getting top number one right here, which is relevancy awareness. This is scalable. The more time you give me, the more case studies I tell you. So sometimes folks will do an hour, sometimes they'll do a half hour.

I'm gonna rapid fire some cases at you here in just a minute. Our two most commonly requested trainings, what we do almost close to 50 of them a year on, is the FTIR on Ramad Basics and Unknown Substance. Those are for our fire departments, our state asset hazmat teams. They'll use some of these little devices to do some presumptive screening on scene. We provide them with training on how to use those devices in context to their other tools, and in context to the response protocols for the state. And a valuable resource, right, or that local science resource for our first responders. Next slide, please. Let's talk shot. I'm already cutting out the time. Emerging threats are one of the things that we can really benefit the community and the country on for maintaining the LRNC.

So you can have all these wonderful threat lists in the world, but anybody who works in preparedness knows that any list you have, well, that ain't gonna be the next big thing that happens, right? So we had a case back in 2018. Down in Chicago, we had patients starting to present to emergency with boba like symptoms. They were sleeping on their eyes, ears, nose, elsewhere. These cases kept coming into emergency departments around the city on this weekend, and what they found is that the initial patient cases were all people that were off parole.

When they admitted to going and smoking these synthetic marijuana products, things like K2 spice that you can drink in the gas station, because they thought it wasn't gonna show up in their court mandated drug testing. These cases grew. They grew up, they appeared to Wisconsin, they went elsewhere to other states. So some of the live product was actually obtained, and it was sent to the Indiana Public Health Lab and a DEA lab. They were able to confirm the presence of a bad actor called rhodipine, which is a super warfarin that's commonly found in your rat poison.

So things like your decomposed bait, it's got rhodifocune in there. They throw a little bit of cornstarch in there, right? Sugar sweet dehydrates them, and then they add a bleeding agent. So there's bleeding agent, this superwarfarin present in this material. The problem with what we were finding with these patient cases, they had to treat them with vitamin K.

So physicians needed vitamin K for treatment. But we were finding that bromifacun was lasting a long time in the body, so these patients were needing large amounts of vitamin K for a long period of time. And I remember sitting on these early modeling calls with CDC for this response event, and someone got out there and said, You know what, if this gets too big too quick, we're gonna run out of the world's supply of vitamin K. There was no clinical testing capability in The US for human exposure to brodificum. Our physicians needed to know how much brodificum was in these patients.

So our group, my department in the MRMC, looked at that, and we found two papers. We found one out of Australia, one out of China that talked about clinical testing for brodifacumab. We looked at that and said, you know what, we think we can stand up a method for this. So we notified CDC. Our CDC leadership said, hey. We would like to stand up a quantitative detection method for this. We're gonna do it under the scope of our LRMC mission. They said we approve, and then they said, hey. You know what? We've got some isotopically labeled Verbib from sitting back in the deep freezer.

Dung along some, and you may not understand that as a scientist, but that is the gold standard for standing up a detection method, is when you have neat material that's isotopically labeled available, and we said, Yes, please. We stood up a CLIA licensed, CAP accredited clinical detection method for Brodificum from the day that first patient walked in to the day we had a test, stood up and ready to do patient testing four weeks. Never before done method, right here in Madison, Wisconsin. That's not too bad, right, after an emerging threat? What a critical resource is the LRMC.

You're going to have chemical events that happen, these emerging chemical events, but you need a high complexity resource that is available to stand up testing capability because it might not be able to be CBC. So maybe it needs to be one of your level one LMC labs, and that's a pretty incredible resource to have available. We did that. Let's go ahead to the next slide. I'm gonna actually go past a few of them. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. One more slide. And another one. Hey. Look at that. Here's where all the cases, all of the known cases were in the country for ALKZ event. We ended up testing around 300 patient samples for about a month and a half. We were the only lab in the country that could do this testing.

A private lab also stood up testing, which we fully support when we have these events. All resources are appreciated on the laboratory side. You can see we had eight fatalities. Does that mean there wasn't a case in Minnesota or Iowa? There might have been, maybe this is why public health surveillance is so important. Those cases just may not have been identified, right? Or they may not have known about the resources available to help support these events. Next slide, please. Here's you can see that time to response. So when an emerging chemical threat event happens, it happens quick. So you need to be able to stand up testing capability quick. But because we're doing clinical testing, it has to be accredited. It has to fall under those regulation. That's a pretty big barrier to hit. We have that capability.

Next slide, please. Alright. Here's our information. We unfortunately had three fatalities and ended up having. Next slide. So we do drinking water events as well. So we have these drinking water emergency collection kits that are available throughout the state. A little over 700 locations of them. This is a partnership that our state lab has with the DNR. So this would be these are located at drinking water municipalities and reservoirs around the state. So if there was a potential intentional contamination of that to the drinking water reservoir, we can rapidly deploy these kits. They are set to come into our laboratory. We quickly accession them out. There's 26 bottles. They go to nine different departments.

We're gonna stand up the lab into that twenty four seven response testing to try to get our decision makers back information as quickly as possible. And we have had several events in our state that have used them. Here's one here. You can see somebody breached this reservoir. They actually found the barbed wire and then tapped down, and maybe somebody put a blanket over it, rolled over. They cut the lock. That blue lid weighed a little over 40 pounds, and if you look on the side of that picture, you can see the brown spots sitting over there in that vegetation. This is where law enforcement partners are critically important. Local law enforcement and FCI evaluate this, and they said, we actually think this has been sitting on one for about two weeks based on the dead vegetation over here. So it helped us to bring that information back to public health so they could monitor the community for potential exposures.

Thankfully, we were able to test this water at multiple points, including some dead spot spaces in there that had water that was that old from back when this event likely occurred, and we didn't find any cause for concern in there. So these are important. It's not just clinical. It may be that environmental response. We had a Poison Center case. So, again, we're a public health lab. We're not So I got a phone call from Poison Center that said, hey. We have this patient in the ER with really weird symptoms. They went into a gas station within Wisconsin, and they purchased this Amsterdam nail polish remover. They said it's it's labeled as nail polish remover, but these are essentially meant to be puffing agents.

They're not regulated products. They said this person doesn't have exposure that would be consistent with isobutylentrine. I said, we've got the bottle on it. You know, this isn't gonna go to court, but this is a UTI case. And and we just think there's something else in there which you be willing to take a look. Said we're willing to do a public health and safety screening. If you understand limitations of what we're willing to do here, we're willing to take a look at it, essentially to what's called our hazmat screen. We can

go a bit further than our

state asset hazmat teeth. So we received this product. It has some little it looked like pills, actually, initially in the bottle on this, And we actually will not handle handle known drug samples. So we didn't call them back and say, hey. Are those pills that actually goes to the state crime lab? That's not us. And they said, no. These are actually ceramic beads that these companies will put in the product as a presentation. So we were able to do some XRS screening on that, confirm that, yeah, those did look like they were ceramic beads. So we were able to do that. So we ran a whole suite of testing here, and what was really interesting so at the bottom picture there, that's just a basic explosive screening kit. It's colorimetric. It's just a white test. I like to do a control drop on the ticket of our actual reagent, and then I have the drop of substance that I'm testing next to it.

So if I had

a filter change, we're able to see what a negative or controlled reagent looks like to that actual sample. So you can see my finger there pointing at a blue dot. The problem with this test, and I wasn't running this for explosives, this is actually a really nice chemical characterization kit. It'll give you some different chemical families as a potential presumptive that can help me direct different testing. So I like it as an initial screening tool. So this the it kept popping the control drop blue. I was like, that shouldn't be blue. That shouldn't be blue. So I actually had to make a control drop because we got down and we looked at the ticket, and it was so vigorously and violently reacting to the reagent. It was off gassing and turning my control drop blue.

So, on the far side of the ticket, look at my other hand over there, you can see a little white square, I had to put my control drop on the other side of the hood because it was off gassing so vigorously. There's my control, there's my positive hit. So we did end up getting hits for isobutyl nitrite on several different technologies. So that huffing agent is there. But then we ran pH. I think pH is one of the most valuable tools we have in any type of hazmat work. The hazmat teams, the firefighters will agree. We like pH. So So we ran it on our pH test strip, and it had a pH of two. We're like, well, that's odd.

So we have a cal we have a digital pH meter. So Mason went, and he calibrated it. We ran it. That pH was point seven. That person huffed something with a pH of point seven. Yeah. They didn't have isobulonitripe signs and symptoms of exposure. They had exposure of unpubbing something that was a strong, strong acid. I can't tell you which acid was in there, but we were able to refer back. You know, this has a strong acid in it. They said, yeah. That makes more sense. Fortunately, that patient did die, and they weren't able to to properly treat them. But this is a way where we can do that chemical characterization support to help meet kind of in that may be there. That makes sense.

Next slide, please. How can we work together? So this was originally talked to the Hurt Groups, but we're retooling it for you here. We'd love to get together for you and plan a preparedness exercise, sometime here in 2026. So if that's of interest to you, we could come up with something clinical, something nonclinical.

Again, we're willing to scale it. Right now, is so critically important that we are telling our federal decision makers that you value these types of resources within the gut, that you value having a chemical emergency response lab. So if you like having this available, let's get together and work together, because we need to demonstrate to our other decision makers that you're using us, that you know we exist, that you value having us as part of your response collaborative group. So love to

get together. And you want an

LRT awareness talk? You want me to come and do another one of these? That's how Carrie and I met. She said, hey. That was a great Herc talk. Can you come do it here in a couple weeks? I said, absolutely. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. If you would like a version of this talk, again, it's scalable. If you give me five minutes, ten minutes, twenty, or sixty, I'll give you cases, and we'll talk, and we'll get awareness on where. We are a high complexity resource. We can stand up that just in time lead, and that is valuable for the people of Wisconsin. Next slide. And there's our contact info. You are welcome to reach out to us and contact us if you have any questions.

Please, if it's an emergency, do not reach out to me or Mason directly. Mason's the call guy in the red shirt in the middle. He's the second in command and our coordinator. Call our 247 number, which is located at the top of. And that's what I have for you, Ben. Any questions? Did you have fun? Did you learn Thank you. Okay.

Thank you to Carrie for the information. Thank you.

You might get added to the team if you talk like that.

Oh, yeah. I like this.

I'll just say that a big reason that I asked Michelle to come was a challenge that we had in November in Marshall with, like, a smell in the air and just kind of a challenge with the hazmat team and public health and not knowing, like, where to even begin because it was so spread throughout the entire village. So we worked with, you know, the police chief, the fire chief. We were added for a few hours. There was multiple calls to the village hall for sore throats and headaches, And it was just but it was all over the village. So it was really challenging for hazmat to you know, there was no specific spot to go check and do any testing.

It finally just kind of resolved itself, but I I think it it sat with me that, what do we do? Like, there's should you know, I need I need more information in order, you know, from an EM perspective. Like, should we have told people to shelter, you know, make sure their windows were closed, things like that, depending on what time of year it would have been. So just left me with a lot of questions. So then when I heard Michelle speak, I just thought it would be beneficial. And and sounds like chief Moravik and you work together a lot from the hazmat team side.

Hey, Kevin. I'll see you next week. Perfect. So just yeah.

That's kinda what stemmed this. And then Racine, I don't know if anyone saw that in the news. They were having some sort of air quality challenge in multiple communities down there. And, again, got me thinking about this and just what resources are out there.

So Yeah. And the state asset hazmat teams, they have so with our lab, all of the type one and two teams, so Racine hazmat, Madison hazmat, these are both type two state asset teams. They carry sample collection kits for our state lab for our LRN B and C. So if we have those white powders where it might need to go for Bioprex screening, or if it needs to come to us for chem, we have five different types of collection protocols. We actually provide our state asset teams all of those sample collection materials for free.

So every team in the state carries that kit. So whether it's Madison, and they all use the same sample collection protocols, which we administer with the teams. So it's a it's a collaborative effort. So that means whether Madison's collecting or Superior or Ashland or LaCrosse or Three Bay or Racine or Vossa, any of those hazmat teams use the same exact bottles, tubes, scoops that we provide, that we know we can test, and they all use the same sample collection protocol. So it gives us this consistent response capability for quality around the state, and Madison Hazmat, as part of their kit, also carries TEDlar bags.

So protocol five is unknown to air. So if we get these sick building events, the school's sick, you get these weird odor type calls, the teams do have the ability to go and collect grab samples using our protocol five. It comes into us. We do a screening on it. I will warn you. It's a Hail Mary screen. Right? It's a snapshot in time. A lot of times, if there are persistent events like the one recent one in Janesville or the one that you had last winter fall, you know, you're likely gonna be setting up more of a continuous air monitoring type support event, but there's always the potential that we could be having hazmat teams collect those grab samples, and we may look and see if we can find a target in there too as part of the the action plan. So it's just good to be aware of that.

And your type one and two teens know they have these kids, they train with us, we go out to the station. Thank you. We

have a lot of people from public health that have joined us as well to So listen thank you guys for joining us for the presentations.

I will take a point of privilege before I turn it over to our chair for the rest of the meeting. Speaking at the hospital in town, hazmat and decompresses are always our I shouldn't say biggest, but are always one of our biggest concerns. So I know I'll I'll say, oh, hey. This would be really neat to do. Yeah. So and work with our lab and ED especially to figure out what we can do.

Okay. Great. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Any other questions before we move on? Hearing none. I'm happy to turn it over to Tim if he wants to

run the breast piece. Otherwise

Good afternoon, everybody. To piggyback on all all that, I apologize for coming in late. I was in interviews for another position, but not me for. But I can't say enough about the state lab. I've known Michelle since I've been part of the team, probably ten plus years now, it seems like.

And us as a team call out there repeatedly. They come in and do countless hours of training with our team. It's just a it's just a resource that I couldn't imagine not having at this level with all these complexities, it's that's ex etcetera. So I really appreciate it, and thank you, Michelle, for taking the time to present today. That was fantastic. I'm kinda uncomfortable with my face being on those big monitors back there. Why don't you tell me my head was so big? Alright. We'll get rolling here.

Do you need the agenda, Tim?

No. I have it here.

Okay. Alright.

So we'll do a call to order here.

Yeah. No. At D.

We're all the way down to D. Sorry. Down to

D already? I already called. I missed the first five minutes. I apologize. Sure. So we'll do action items. The only PC guideline bylaws and review.

So Yeah. If if you you had an opportunity to send them out.

I did. So, Tim, right before the meeting within an hour, know Denise did send them out to people who would not be in the room. Is there anybody member in the room that needs a copy of it? Yes. Okay. So I I guess I had an opportunity to look through it. I'm not a voting member, but if you'd like my, suggestions, I can go ahead with those.

Please proceed.

Okay. So we had a person in our office that loved the cookie crumb thing down at the bottom of the the documents. I think we just get rid of that, and that doesn't have to be changed day in, day out in the footer. So that that just goes away. And then I did wanna point out a a couple things that we have coming up in June as our election, so you guys need to think about that.

And the only other change that I had was going to be on page seven under the plan distribution. And in the past it just says it'll be distributed to county fire departments. I do have a section that identifies who those plans are going to with distribution, and it does include the nine eleven, law enforcement, other responding agencies that and if it's another county that's affected by a vulnerability zone, I I include them. So I just would suggest changing it to add the Dane County nine eleven communications center and other responding agencies as identified within the plan. And then the next sentence with that and other agencies may receive a hard copy.

Quite frankly, I don't think I need to mail a hard copy and paper postage and everything when an electronic copy would do. So if we just get rid of hard copy, I think that would be sufficient. And that was all that I had.

Alright, Darlene. Are we gonna vote on that today, will that be on the next meeting for those changes?

I would suggest since we have a forum that we would go ahead and take a vote and get that administrative stuff done for the LAPC part and have that off our agenda for the year.

Apparently, there's no questions or pushback. Right?

If there there's usually a motion, a second, and then any questions. So

Well, first, we get is there any other questions on those two topics

or any other changes?

I hear none. Could we get a motion to approve the review of the guidelines or the guidelines?

I would make that motion to accept the guidelines with the changes that Denise proposed.

Do we have a second?

I can second that. This is Burley.

Thank you, Burley. All in favor?

Darnice. Darnice.

All in favor of the changes to the LAPC guidelines?

Aye. Aye. I think all good. Anyone

opposed? Alright. They're approved. And then, Darlene, there are d as well, the compliance inspector designated review.

Correct. And as a requirement of federal regulation and FGRA guidelines. We do have to talk about the compliance inspector designation. We do have that within the bylaws that we just approved, but I do like to have it noted on the agenda and in the minutes that we did discuss that action, we have it labeled as the state and I don't think there's any other action outside of noting that in our minutes that we've talked about that is sufficient since it's in the bylaws.

Alright. Noted. Moving So on to e, reports and committee, the hazmat report. Notable instances for Madison, we have had we I called in by a parole officer to test for to do a explosive test that came back negative. We've we had two large I don't wanna say but I say large.

We have two fuel spill leaks of diesel that we had in the city, one on the East Side and excuse me. Both of them were on the West Side. Those are managed by the hazmat team with oil dry and full of tanks. And then our last one was we had an apartment building on the East Side Of Madison. Oops.

Excuse me. Second to last. We had an irritant order, and we ended up evacuating the building, brought everybody down to the 1st Floor Community Room. Basically, the the irritant was in lines with pepper spray, but it couldn't be determined at that time. We did we monitored the building.

We came up with no hazards. We ventilated, and the irritant went away. And then the the the residents were allowed to go back into the building, and we had no further incidents there. And then the last one was the marshal unknown order, and that was I don't have the date, but I believe that was in November. And that was unfounded as well. Does anybody have any questions on those? Alright. Darlene, our EPCA report?

EPCO report, I guess we did a completion or closeout of the EPCO grant for 2025 met all the grant deliverables. So we should be hearing something shortly from the state. And since it is a state funded grant, we did go ahead and we were able to apply for 2026 funds also. So that application has been submitted. We don't have anything back due date, but I don't imagine that anything outside an award would come through.

I did make up my list for 2026 plans that I will be updating. And, of course, it's already changed from the first of the year because there's some additional plans that facilities had not gotten back to me in '25, so those have been rolled over. I'll be doing at least one facility visit with one of those businesses and I will just go ahead and circulate it around. There's still tier two reporting going on. It's due by March 1 of every year, but there's always agency or facilities that are straggling in with their information.

And in the past, I always felt like I was behind the eight ball starting with the plans because I'm waiting for all of that reporting to take place, and then I have to extract it from the state system and import it into my, vulnerability zone or its Cameo is the program that I would run the, vulnerability zones with. So I'm always waiting until that is done. This year, I went ahead and thought I could start with some facilities. So I've done that and hopefully there's going to be if there's any changes, slight changes. There was also I did work with Madison Wells and we'll get to an introduction here shortly as well.

After submitting all those plans, there was a notation that the Wisconsin Southern Railroad, there's a different phone number that our dispatch center has. So there were some changes to those. I'm making changes to those plans, getting them signed off again so that they're legitimate, but not counting them in my numbers. There were a couple of plans that had a few more updates. Those will be counted and then we'll just I'll just be maneuvering the facilities throughout the year like I always have to do.

So I'll circulate this around if anyone else is interested online to see what those facilities are that will be updated. Denise can send a portion of that report out, but it's just my spreadsheet that I do every year to keep myself straight because there's so many of them. Kinda small to to look at. But and I think that's it for EPGRAPH. No, that isn't it for EPGRAPH. The county board did approve a resolution. We did write for a grant. Tim,

this

is gonna be news for you, but we'll be working with you on the planning committee for a tabletop exercise with a hazmat scenario. Totally grant funded. So Melissa Waller, She'll be she is the contractor, and we'll figure out a date. We'll include the LEPC members if they want to join in for that, but we'll be talking about that. So that had gone through the county board and was approved. So that should be it then.

Alright. Fantastic. Also Yeah. I apologize. I did miss something from my report.

Earlier or late last year, we we wrote for a grant for a hot zone survival class. I mean, Darlene and Denise were basically, they're pivotal in getting the grant. It was through their division, and I just wanna say thank you for that. I know it's a lot of time. As anybody knows, it's written for a grant. It's never fun. There's a lot of work to it. And us as the Massive Fire Department, we appreciate your time and effort in securing that training grant for us. So thank you. Yep.

Sorry. We couldn't get the other one, but I kind of anticipated that. The the third and final one that I had written on a grant is a commodity flow study. So Melissa will already be doing that then as well as the contractor, and she'll be conducting a commodity flow study specific to Dane County. The last one we did was a regional commodity flow.

Well, thank you. Think that was it.

We appreciate it. Alright. Moving on here. Any other committee member reports?

I have something on that, Tim, also. So when I was doing the Madison Wells, I did find out that my contact there, who is also an LEPC committee member, had retired. I was working with another Joe, but it was a different Joe, and he is here today. And Joe Demoret, is that how you say his last name? He had recommended to Joe Brand that he get involved in the LEPC.

So at first thought, I was thinking that in our five laws that it could be a designee on the committee to fill in in his absence. However, when you look at a vacancy also within the guidelines, there is notice of the county executive appointing somebody to fill that spot. So I did talk to Charles about this this afternoon to see which direction we wanted to go with it. So Charles, if you'd like to chime

in.

Really? You're gonna put this for me now. Our position right now, we're gonna maintain, Joe, and we are going to submit a documentation to the county executive asking for his appointment for the remainder of the year. So we stay within guidelines and policies of the county. And, when we come up to renewals and if he still would love love to be part of this team and and move forward, we will, at that time, put in the request along with others to be appointed for another session to be on the board.

Right. Any questions on that? Again, you know, we've kinda done it both ways in the past, but to be real efficient so we don't run into any technicalities with with rules and laws and county ordinances and media, anything, we wanna do it the right way.

And if we recall, there are two upgrades facilities that we do need on the board, and this was one of the two. We did have hydroid that we had lost this past year also due to a retirement, But we still have the VA hospital that technically is a planning facility as well. So with Joe coming aboard and getting the appointment through the county executive, we will officially fill that. And then the new board is goes to county board then again in June so that when we elect vice chair, chair, and the rest of the group if there's any other changes. So we would do that vacancy now and then move forward again in June.

And with that, I'd like to open it up to a introduction to Joe, if you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speech.

Sure. I

don't have much to say. Joe Grandy. I'm the water resources manager at Madison Water Utility. I've been at the water utility since 2006. Previously, I was the water, quality manager.

Joe Demora had retired about fifteen months ago, and his position and my position merged into the water resources manager position. So I have all the responsibilities that Joe DeMore had, which was overseeing our all of our staff that operate the well system, all of our wells, our pumps, our storage tanks, and all those responsibilities. And then I retain all the water quality responsibilities. So for all of our monitoring, cross connection control, our wellhead protection, and all those other duties. And the way that it relates to this committee, obviously, we store gaseous chlorine in all of our facilities.

We have 22 facilities around the city of Madison, and we are a facility that's under this this regulation. So happy to be here, happy to meet folks. And if you have any questions now or after the meeting, happy to discuss those with you.

So other than that, you'll take it to the county exec and

That's correct.

Virginia.

He was just saying he's different. We'll be different, but that's the goal is becoming more. So we'll say welcome. So

Darlene, a question similar to that. I represent the Dane County chiefs of place. Is that a board position, or is that a guest position? Because I'm going to bring my lieutenant who's in charge of emergency preparedness to these meetings and probably hand the torch over to him. And I don't know if we

have to do something similar. Normally, it's appointed by the president of the association position. That's how it's always been in the past. And, honestly, don't hold me to this, but it since I've been here, it's always been usually a chief of police that has served in that role. Now it could be different. They may have changed your bylaws, or they may not be anything different. You can probably appoint a lieutenant.

We we yeah. We have lieutenants that are members of the chiefs association, and they do take on some committee to work. So I don't think anybody at the chiefs association know I even attend these because it's never on the agenda. So I think this is just a little secret.

Dan Blagdere appointed Dan Blagdere appointed you because I had a conversation with him behind the scenes and told him that we needed you. How's that? So we we do know that you're here. Alright. Appreciate that.

I will I will ensure that there's an appointment then if I hand over the torch. Thank you. Yes. Okay.

Will that be before June when this all goes

Yep. Official? We're only two

years here. I'm gonna bring him to the next meeting or two Okay. Just for introductions.

That that'll give me time to look up, and and I'm not sure if it specifically has to be a chief or not. Historically, in my old county also, it was either the sheriff or

or chief. So when it

they appointed a chief to to serve on these committees. If you're tired of looking at me, I know you see me here in one at the other meetings, and you're probably sick and you're probably tired of hearing Carrie talk during those meetings and Andrew, so I get it.

Not not at all. I I I do I do wonder about retirement quite often, but I have no dates set. And Jeremy, his wheelhouse is emergency preparedness, so, I mean, this would would fit into this perfectly.

Yeah. I mean, it's a law enforcement rep, so I'm not sure there's that specification, but we'll double check on it.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Otherwise, if anyone else would like to give up the torch before next month or by the next month meeting, just let us know if we need to look at a replacement or if you have a replacement.

Marlene, I thought we said we're not accepting any resignations. You said

Usually not. Every everyone likes to stay.

Alright. Do we have any other committee meeting reports member reports? Excuse me. Alright. Hearing none. Future medium meeting items and dates.

That'll be June.

Tim, you offered to have it at the station since we can't have it here. So you

have to pick what day in June.

Alright.

But but to ensure that we have quorum, do you have the capabilities to do virtual? Because it will be it's an even year, so it's election year.

Yes. You did hybrid lesson.

Well but hardly anyone showed.

No. We did do hybrid.

Do you still wanna do it at the fire station?

Yeah.

If if that would work, show us your capabilities.

Alright.

The hazmat team capabilities.

I thought you're talking about our IT.

Right. Has too. Has too.

It just said it just was upgraded. I haven't seen it yet, but we shouldn't have any issues. I'll check

it Okay.

Next week or two when I get out there. But how about June 8 or the fifteenth. Either one works.

Do you have a preference?

I don't have my calendar with me.

So Okay.

There's nothing major on our calendar either of those days, like the account department.

So let's should we I

don't have medical adviser on my calendar. So if that's

It's usually in here till Well, there won't be anything in here. No. So and it's at a it'll be

at the fire station, but

MIS. And we don't have to.

Nobody

overlaps. Here. MIS what? MIS would be it's on the eighth. If we do it on June 8, does it matter to you? No. We're done by one. It doesn't but we're gonna do it at the

fire station. Yes. We'd still be fine. I'll just join remote. Okay. I think I'm the main

You're an onboarding member. So See, mean,

The fifteenth works as well, so that's not a big issue. It's not an issue.

You pick.

And what time?

There's no conflict for each one?

Nope.

Let's do let's do the fifteenth at 1PM.

Got it.

At Station 7?

Correct. That works. We're wide open. So alright. That's easy enough.

Future meeting items, we're gonna just review the hazmat team capabilities, equipment, station, etcetera. Is there any other items you wanna talk I guess that covers that meeting. Is there any other things you wanna discuss during that meeting?

Just the appointments for the committee.

Okay.

Appointments in the election. Yeah. Yep. That'll be it.

That'll be the nominations and then the election. Correct?

Yeah.

Alright. Alright. We'll move on. G, public comment on items not on the agenda. Does anybody have any public comments?

Do we have anyone online? We don't have public internally. Alright.

Then we'll move on to h. Such other business is allowed by law. Going once.

Soft. Alright.

Make a motion to adjourn.

Somebody's reading ahead. Give

me a second.

In second, Patrick.

I think nobody else wants to.

Aye. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it.

Thank