2024-04-07 14:27:21
A package containing a suspicious powder, a person suspected of having Ebola disease, a biological attack… Firefighters must be prepared for such atypical biological risks.
But unlike common biohazards, like seasonal flu (which can be dangerous, but for which vaccines and treatments exist), atypical biohazards are rare. How, then, can we prepare for such risks – whether natural, intentional or accidental?
Train yourself in nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical risks
Preparing and training to deal with an act of bioterrorism or a case of Ebola is not easy. At the government level, the Biotox plan, which is part of the Vigipirate plan, defines the actions to be taken in the event of a suspicion or an act of bioterrorism (health measures, prevention, surveillance, alert, etc.).
To prepare concretely for biological risks, firefighters can train in “NRBC” risks (nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical risks). However, biological risk is currently defined as a subcategory of chemical risk in these formations. “The biological risk […] is not subject to dedicated training” explains a group of firefighters in a recent article.
In this publication, firefighters believe that despite their training, there is still a “lack of knowledge […] correlated with the difficulty of risk perception and the absence of doctrines. This makes it difficult to identify a biological risk.
A Franco-German project including scientists and firefighters
How can we detect the presence of a virus or bacteria? How to decontaminate surfaces potentially contaminated by them? How can we make the actions and procedures to follow to deal with biological risk operational in the field?
These questions are at the heart of a vast Franco-German project entitled Decontamination measures aimed at restoring facilities and the environment following a natural or voluntary release of pathogenic microorganisms. The project not only brings together scientists from different disciplines, such as biologists and sociologists, but also, and above all, it integrates first responders: firefighters.
The scenario of a case of Ebola in July 2024, during the Olympics…
To prepare for biological risks, firefighters can mobilize a useful ally: scenarios. As part of the mentioned project, I was able to follow the genesis of such a scenario and was able to observe it in action. The scenario script is as follows:
It’s the summer of 2024, the Olympics are taking place and there is a spike in Ebola in some countries. As the risk of attacks is high and forest fires are more frequent in summer, French firefighters are supported by their German colleagues.
On July 31, 2024, Marseille airport alerted the firefighters because the passenger on a Paris-Marseille flight presented severe symptoms of hemorrhagic fever. It is assumed that he contracted Ebola disease. What follows is a whole chain of operations involving French and German firefighters: treatment and evacuation of the victim in a sarcophagus, securing the intervention zone, detection of the biological agent, decontamination of various surfaces…
Decontamination of an ambulance. Maria Viola Zinna
A field exercise, far from the imagination of the films
Between the paper version of the scenario and the life-size scenario that unfolded before my eyes, the gap was significant. The scenario had to be adapted to the realities of the Bouches-du-Rhône Firefighters Training Center, located in Velaux, where the final exercise took place on March 1, 2024.
No airport, no planes, no hospital in sight. Instead, a recomposed and reduced version of this reality, with an ambulance, a victim played by a firefighter, tents and different equipment. Instead of the Ebola virus, researchers at the Pasteur Institute deposited a virus that is harmless to humans.
We are far from the scripting of biological risk in popular culture (as in films Army of the 12 Monkeys or 28 Days Later or video game Resident Evil). In the scenario developed by the firefighters, there are no heroes, no entire society to save, no malicious people releasing microorganisms.
Exercise simulating a biological risk (case of Ebola), March 1, 2024, Bouches-du-Rhône firefighter training center.
Transforming emergency into a “normal feature of life”
Apart from these adaptations, the firefighters nevertheless “played the game”. They carried out zoning to secure a certain perimeter, put on their protective suits and took samples (see the video above). To decontaminate, they tested a new decontamination foam developed by the CEA with an industrial partner.
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The exercise made it possible to normalize and anticipate biological risk because, in general, this type of exercise transforms the emergency as an interval and “distinct field of action” into a “normal characteristic of life […] that we must anticipate and for which we must prepare.”
In doing so, the exercise has the advantage of combining two types of knowledge: theoretical knowledge, transmitted during training and via texts such as the National Reference Guide for chemical and biological risks, and the tacit knowledge that must be learned ” on the job”, such as mastery of technical equipment as well as knowing how to put on and take off a suit.
Real and fictional
Three things surprised me during my observations. First, the exercise was both real and fictional. Real, because these were real firefighters handling and testing real equipment, while taking the exercise very seriously.
But the exercise was also fictitious, because the virus present was harmless and Marseille airport reduced to a discursive element. The exercise presented a reduced and simplified version of the scenario – a “version of emergency”, to use the words of two geographers.
All elements were preconfigured and disciplined, except one: the wind. The latter partially destroyed a tent and made zoning difficult. “If it’s windy, like today, it can be difficult to install the zoning. But the wind is the boss, so we have to adapt,” captain Diane Borselli explained to the public. Even during an exercise in a training center, the unpredictable and nature can erupt.
Undressing in “rabbit skin”. Maria Viola Zinna
When the speed of intervention gestures rubs shoulders with the slowness of undressing
Secondly, the firefighters’ actions were controlled and rapid. The organization was almost military. All movements were quick, except the movements to remove the protective suits.
Compared to the other gestures, it felt like we were watching a scene in slow motion. The reason for this “slowness”? In order to remove a potentially contaminated suit, it must be removed “rabbit skin”, that is, by gently unrolling the suit from the inside to the outside.
Last surprise, in my observations, very few elements relate to risk culture, social identity and the psychology of firefighters.
Indeed, the concerns traditionally highlighted in human and social sciences work on firefighters were only slightly perceptible during the exercise. Because to prepare for atypical biological risks, firefighters ask themselves an also atypical question: How to construct a realistic fiction and how to equip and train to face it?
The “Decontamination measures aimed at restoring facilities and the environment following a natural or voluntary release of pathogenic microorganisms – DEFERM” program is supported by the National Research Agency (ANR), which funds project-based research in France. The ANR’s mission is to support and promote the development of fundamental and finalized research in all disciplines, and to strengthen the dialogue between science and society. To find out more, consult the ANR website.
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