UKB Lighthorse Prepare to Aid Northeastern Oklahomans in Times of Disaster

Last month, the United Keetoowah BandLighthorse Tribal Police and UKB Natural ResourcesDepartments performed an in-house HazardousWaste (Hazmat) Training for its officersand resource members, in preparations for anychemical or hazardous waste emergencies.

The certified eight member team, comprisedof six Lighthorse officers and two NaturalResources employees, under the direction of LighthorseDirector David McCarter, Team Supervisor,performed a full scale exercise from unloadingthe equipment, setup of the Mass CasualtiesDecontamination Tent to actually decontaminatingvolunteer victims. There were two additionalLighthorse officers involved in the training, andseveral Talking Leaves Job Corps students participated,serving as the ‘victims’ of several disasters.

“Our goal is to be able to set up and beprepared to decontaminate chemically contaminatedvictims within less then 10 to 15 minutes”,stated McCarter. McCarter has completed a 40hour Hazardous Waste (HazMat) and TechnicianOperation Level, Awareness Level, Site safetysupervisor and OSHA training.

The Keetoowah Cherokee unit is in Region4. This region covers 13 counties in northeastOklahoma. There are three small decontaminationtrailers located in Region 4, one with the UnitedKeetoowah Tribe, one in Muskogee and one inSapulpa. These trailers are strategically placed invarious groups that have a variety of jobs in differentareas of training.

There’s a Response group, Incident Commandgroup, Decontamination group and FirstResponders’ group. “Since we are state-funded,we are subject to be called out; we are actually onthe state’s call list. In case of a stated emergency,our contact numbers are on the states call list. Ifwe are called, we respond. In time of emergenciesall groups get together and set up their units,”said McCarter.

“Our job is to setup the ‘MassCasualties Decontamination Tent’; we have todecontaminate victims before they are sent foremergency care. We have to decontaminate victimsfrom chemicals such as biological, radiologicalor nuclear chemicals before transporting themto local hospitals. The hospitals will not acceptpatients if they are exposed to chemicals withoutproper decontamination,” added McCarter.

All team members are required to haveHazardous Waste Operations training, a basic40 hour training course given by the State FireAcademy in conjunction with FEMA. The teamis also required to take an annual eight hour refreshertraining every year to maintain their certification.There are different levels of trainingwhich are offered through the State Fire Academyand FEMA. The in-house Hazmat training will beperformed on a monthly basis, to fine tune UKB’ssetup training. For more information please contactUKB Lighthorse Tribal Police’s Secretary,Rebecca Keys at 918-453-9961.