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Source: OPCW
OPCW Media Release – The Second Advanced Regional Assistance-and-Protection Course on Chemical Emergency Response for States Parties in Latin America and the Caribbean was held from 3 to 7 August in San José, Costa Rica.
The course was co-organized by the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Costa Rican National Authority to the Chemical Weapons Convention, with the support of the National Fire fighter Academy. The course benefitted also from contributions made by instructors from Argentina, Guatemala and St, Kitts and Nevis under the Instructor Exchange Program. Twenty-seven participant first responders from 15 States Parties in the Region attended the course.
The training was the second stage of an Assistance and Protection full training cycle designed for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean (GRULAC) States region that begun in Dominican Republic last March for the same group of participants.
Different scenarios of growing complexity provided for advanced training of the participants on the proper use of individual and protective equipment which included SCBA, as well as containment, rescue and decontamination techniques. The course provided extensive training in the practice of the incident command system approach, aimed at the improvement of coordination and effectiveness of response during incidents with chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial chemicals.
The nations that participated in this regional training included: Argentina, Barbados, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and St Kitts and Nevis.
Firefighters from Costa Rica will now move to Colombia for the next phase of the training, which will consist of a large-scale field exercise, which will take place in Bogota from November 2nd to November 6th.
The OPWC operates as the international enforcement entity of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which prohibits the use, development and stockpiling of chemical weapons and other related activity. During 2015, six OPWC courses were designed for GRULAC participants, who acquired and exercised their emergency response skills in different emergency response scenarios developed by the Costa Rican training providers.
