BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

Suddenly firefighters — and the hazmat team, who are firefighters — are visible.

They’re not doing anything they didn’t do before Sept. 11. But they’re doing more of it, says Wayne Ashworth, director of emergency services for Rowan County.

For the past three years, Salisbury and Rowan County’s Hazmat — hazardous materials — team has averaged one call a month, primarily for fuel spills.

But no more.

“For the last three weeks,” says Ashworth, since the anthrax scare hit the nation, “we’ve averaged three or four a day.”

None have turned up anything.

The public seems to have a heightened awareness of the dedication of firefighters — hundreds of whom have given their lives — since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The local desire to say “thank you” has been overwhelming

“The ladies from the Heritage Plantation called the other day,” Ashworth says, “and said, ‘We’d like to bring you all lunch, all cooked at home. We want to say thank you.’ ”

The nursing home is about a quarter of a mile down Old Concord Road from the emergency operation and agricultural building.

“And it was all cooked at home,” Ashworth says. “they put out a huge meal, and it was delicious. And for a couple of weeks the hospital gave free meal tickets to all policemen, firemen, EMS people. While things like that have happened in the past, they have not happened in the quantities we have seen lately. It’s an awareness of the public because of the awareness of the events of Sept. 11, and it’s a good feeling. It makes you feel appreciated. I think the public looks at public safety people now differently.”

Rick Fesperman, assistant chief of the Salisbury Fire Department, has the same reaction.

“We’ve gotten cards, letters, people just dropping in on us, people bringing us food and cookies, but mainly people stopping and actually crying and telling us how much they appreciate the job we’re doing,” he says. “To a firefighter a ‘thank you’ is the most wonderful thing in the world. To know the public does care about what we’re here to do ...”

The hazmat team is a cooperative effort of Salisbury and Rowan County.

“Vehicles and equipment are furnished by the county,” Ashworth says, “but most of the people on the team are city firefighters. The county pays them a small salary supplement for being on the team, and in turn they agree to respond to any place in the county if they’re needed.”

Responses to calls relating to hazardous materials fall into three levels.

Level 1 is for gas fumes or fuel spills that need to be cleaned up and don’t amount to a lot. Generally those are non-emergency calls.

Level 2 is the one that requires the Hazmat team, Ashworth says. It could be anything from a vehicle accident with a large fuel spill to unknown substances. All the current anthrax and mail scares fall into that level.

Level 3 requires total response.

“We try to funnel everything through 911,” he says. “That gets it into the system and into operation. What we do with a call depends on what information we get.”

The vast majority of calls received lately relate to suspicious mail.

“There’s a middle point between public awareness and public panic,” he says. “People have a heightened sense of cautiousness and alarm. We’re trying to be responsive but not unduly upset the people in the community.”

Most of the calls have related to letters, Fesperman says, and they range from someone being afraid to open a sweepstakes letter to something as simple as an ad from a local car dealership without an address.

“We encourage people to use common sense,” he says calling special attention to an advisory issued by the FBI, suggesting people look for letters and packages with no return addresses, restrictive markings, things mailed from a foreign country, excessive postage, misspelled words, protruding wires, a strange odor, oily stains, discoloration or even crystallization on the wrappers.

Based on what the people who call tell the hazmat team, he says, “we might go in with something as simple as rubber gloves and a mask like you’re mowing your yard.”

The call from the main Salisbury Post Office Friday involved a granular substance that spilled from a box. It turned out to be harmless herbs or spices from Liberia.

“But not knowing what was involved,” Fesperman says, “we suited up two of our hazmat workers with airpacks, disposable Tyvek suits and protective gloves. We’ve got a seal on the face mask, and we put duct tape around it to insure it’s tight where the mask, the gloves and the boots go on so all areas are sealed from any product getting to our firefighter’s skin.”

The other three of a five-man team on each shift at Fire Station No. 52 on South Main Street help them suit up, which takes from 10 to 15 minutes, and then back them up.

The teams at that station also are backed up by firefighters at the stations on East Innes and West Innes.

Fesperman estimates that 80 percent of the firefighters are certified as hazmat technicians who are able to put the suits on and go into a hazardous level enterprise.

That requires “very intensive training,” he says. A hazmat technician has gone through four or five levels of training, including a two-week chemistry course and a two-week technician course taught by state certified instructors eight hours a day with night classes and lots of homework.

“It’s not like a seminar,” he says.

Three technicians are always available and off-duty people can be called in “just as we would with a major fire.”

The county fire marshal’s office also helps, setting up de-contamination teams in various sectors of the county.

“We feel confident,” Fesperman says. “And we want the public to feel safe and comfortable.”

Some calls are wild goose chases.

“The more information we can get out to people, the less calls we’ll have. But if there’s something suspicious, we’re going to check it out. That’s our job.”

A package or letter that someone thinks looks suspicious but then decides, “No, that can’t happen to us,” will be when it happens, he says. “Then we’ve got people exposed who could have been kept away.”

“We don’t want to create an unnecessary panic,” he says. And the “very good news,” is that none of the calls have turned up anything.

“Our job is to serve and protect the public. That’s why they call us and police and EMS public safety officers, and that’s what we’re going to do. And I feel like the citizens of Rowan County can feel safe. I feel like we’re handling it very good.”

How do firefighters deal with their own fears?

“We assume the risk,” he says, whether it’s fighting fire or dealing with hazardous materials, “but we try to take the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. There’s a risk factor, but I don’t think there’s a fear factor, and I think that showed in New York where 340 and some firefighters were killed doing their job and weren’t thinking about dying. They were thinking about getting those thousands of people out of there.

“And you find that with firefighters and rescue people across the country, and it doesn’t matter if it’s New York or Salisbury or Charlotte or anywhere else.”

You might understand why every little boy — and now little girl — wants to grow up to be a firefighter and wear that bright red hat and ride the big fire engine, but what motivates those who grow up and choose such a profession?

“I think you’re born to it,” Fesperman says.

And today’s dangers haven’t changed their commitment.

Salisbury Fire Chief Sam Brady has put together “a very good team,” Ashworth says. The right people are in the right positions, and “he’s confident with our abilities and the operation level. People have a very good fire chief in Salisbury and they need to know that.”

Terrorism has put Rowan and the nation in a state of heightened awareness, he says. “We don’t know where it’s going to lead us, but we’re going to be prepared to go there and stop it. Whether you’re a public safety worker in the homeland here or a military worker in Afghanistan, we’re all in it for a common reason and that’s to protect the United States of America.”

Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com .