California Trains Emergency Responders About Vehicle Safety

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Well today we're pleased to have first responder safety training workshop, which is
really geared to train the trainers in various elements of our community-- those that
deal with fire response, those that are in ambulances, those that drive tow trucks,
those that educate at secondary and primary levels of education. And those are the
folks that are here. We've got a great variety of people here and we're quite excited about
that. And it's going to explain the various alternative fuels in modules so that they
can then transmit that information, that education, onto their potential arena, whoever
that happens to be.
National Alternative Fuel Training Consortium, our mission is to reduce dependency on
foreign oil. We understand that first responders, if they're not properly trained then
what would happen is that the fuel that was involved in an incident would not be - it
would not be a positive experience. First responders are highly trained before they
take our training. However, what we do is we train what's different about alternative
fuel and advanced technology vehicles. And it's most important that they have this
training.
College of the Desert has been a big player in Coachella Valley for quite a while. We've teamed up with
Sun Line, very interested in alternative fuels. We were contacted by the Clean Cities
Coalition and also with West Virginia University and were real excited that they decided
to pick our facility to do this training.
It's extremely important that the first responders are trained in alternative fueled
vehicles. There is a large number of them that are now coming out on the roadways today
and so far the training in these vehicles for us has been very minimal. This class
provides an opportunity for first responders to come out and actually get a hands-on
look at these vehicles, have an idea how they work, and then some of the safety features
that are built into the vehicles that should work for us to help render those vehicles
safe. There hasn't been training like this yet, really, on a large scale basis for
first responders. This program is on the cutting edge of the technology that's out
there. The first responders that are being trained here today are learning new
techniques. They are learning about new vehicles and they are learning about new
technologies and the training that they get then they can go out and utilize in their
day to day jobs. And this is really an amazing opportunity for those first responders.
The one thing that I think I could take back to my department is the fact that there is no
standardization on these alternative fueled vehicles. They are all different and a
first responder needs to be prepared to tackle just about anything and that could be
specific to each individual vehicle. This is one big area of need and concern in our
efforts to the responder community and we need to enhance the skills, knowledge and
abilities of all our firefighters and first responders to be able to know how to adequately
respond to these types of incidents.
Basically, our life depends on it. If we don't have this training then we're not
trained to work in the field in different situations with all of these different
vehicles. Obviously today we've already learned some extensive stuff about cutting into
the wrong spot you can get electrocuted. So far it's been a great benefit. Every first
responder should go through this type of course.
The whole issue from day one is removing barriers, and not only barriers for the general
public, who we hope will use these vehicles and get us off of foreign oil, but certainly
for those that have to look after us, whether it's a mechanic or somebody driving an
ambulance or tow truck, they need to be comfortable so that they can do their job in
case the need arises. And these kinds of programs help do that.
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