Pittsburgh Readies for State of Emergency
More than 1,000 public safety experts from across the region will converge on Pittsburgh on Sunday through Wednesday for a conference on disaster planning.
Dec. 1--More than 1,000 public safety experts from across the region will converge on Pittsburgh on Sunday through Wednesday for a conference on disaster planning.
Participants in the Emergency Preparedness & Prevention and Hazmat Spills Conference will learn the latest disaster response techniques and examine state-of-the-art detection and cleanup technologies, organizers said Friday.
They will have several chances to network with colleagues, swap stories and share advice, said Highland Park native Glenn Cannon, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's assistant administrator for disaster operations.
"It's a chance to get to know a lot of experts," Cannon said. "There will be formal learning on basically anything related to emergency management and hazardous material response, as well as informal learning."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring the conference. First responders, counter-terrorism professionals, emergency managers and medical, fire, law-enforcement and industry personnel from across the country will attend, organizers said. The public is invited.
Highlights will include several tabletop drills and workshops, advice on whether to fight a chemical fire or evacuate an afflicted neighborhood, and discussions on how to handle radiation risks.
Conference attendees will visit Somerset County to see the site where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, and to tour Quecreek Mine, where nine miners survived three days trapped underground in 2002.
Cannon -- the former Allegheny County manager and Pittsburgh public safety director -- will deliver the opening speech.
The conference first was held in the late 1980s and changes locations every year, officials said.
The focus and dynamics of the conferences change yearly as emergency experts react and learn from disasters, Cannon said. Those events include 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, he said.
"Originally, this was hazardous material-focused," he said. "It's evolved from (training for) hazmat to weapons of mass destruction to all facets of emergency preparedness."
Other speakers will include officials from the U.S. Department of Justice and Homeland Security. Thomas Reed, a retired hazmat director at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Dravosburg, will give a lecture titled "Radiation and You" detailing how to react to a nuclear disaster. The lab develops advanced naval nuclear propulsion technology.
The conference will be at the Pittsburgh Hilton, Downtown. For more information on lectures and workshops, call 1-800-364-7974, or visit www.2007conference.org.
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