Our food supply, water resources and buildings are vulnerable to terrorist attack. Many of the techniques and methods have been available for hundreds of years, but here in the 21st century, the opportunities to impact thousands of people for a long period of time have escalated. Hello, my name is Ken Stewart and I'll be your host for this second in a series of three broadcasts looking at preparations to respond and recover from terrorist and other catastrophic events. Responding and recovering from such attacks demands skills and equipment already available across the country. On today's broadcast, we'll look at four events that place demands on recovery resources. First we'll review the steps taken to address a major infestation of animals in the poultry industry and look at the steps to prevent the spread of disease. Then we'll visit the Uroch Tribal Lands in the western U.S. for a dump site cleanup involving toxic wastes at a difficult location. In our third segment, we'll move to an abandoned chemical plant in Tennessee with a quantity of unknown and potentially unstable chemicals. Finally, we'll look at the efforts to recover from the most recent space shuttle disaster. Please note that all of the segments on our program have been produced by our partners, so you'll see the full credit list at the end of each portion of the program. Avian influenza is a viral disease. It has a variable incubation period, generally ranging from three to fourteen days. It's so contagious that virtually one hundred percent of the flock becomes infected very quickly after the virus gets into the flock. In this outbreak, we were dealing with a low-pathogenic H7N2 strain, which produced low mortality, respiratory symptoms, and a drop in egg production. This strain showed a marked predilection for turkeys over chickens. The concern, of course, was that the virus would mutate to the highly pathogenic form, which causes greater than ninety-five percent mortality in a flock within twenty-four hours. So why do we worry about a low-path strain of avian influenza? Even the low-path forms can cause significant numbers of carcass condemnations at slaughter and significant losses of egg production. As we've seen, low-path H5 or H7 usually results in immediate interstate and international trading bargos, sometimes not just on the affected state, but on the entire nation. And of course, the painful lessons of the past have taught us that left unchecked, these low-path H5 or H7 strains always mutate to high-pathogenic strains eventually. Let's take a quick look at the epidemiology of this outbreak in Virginia. We have no firm proof of exactly how this AI was introduced into Virginia. The index farm was a company-owned turkey breeder hen farm located just east of Harrisonburg, Virginia. The company veterinarian was called out to examine sick birds in one of ten houses on the farm on March the seventh of this year. Fortunately for us, this company veterinarian had done his PhD on avian influenza in turkeys in Minnesota, and so when he saw respiratory symptoms and a marked drop in egg production, he immediately thought of avian influenza as a possibility. Blood samples taken that day were negative for avian influenza antibody when tested at the local laboratory. Tissues from those same birds that day were also submitted to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa for virus isolation. The flock was re-bled on the 11th of March and was then positive for avian influenza antibody in the Virginia lab. On March the 13th, the National Veterinary Services Laboratory reported a positive avian influenza virus isolation and typed the virus as H7N2. Further pathogenicity studies by the National Veterinary Services Lab determined that this was a low path strain of the virus. This index flock of about 14,000 birds was depopulated and buried on the farm on March the 15th. Retrospectively on March the 6th, the day prior to the sick call, two houses of breeder hens on this farm had been moved from this farm to a second farm. The second farm initially tested negative for antibody but began showing clinical symptoms and by March the 18th was testing positive. Within the next two days, three other breeder farms belonging to the same company and all within a two mile radius of the index farm also developed clinical symptoms and tested positive. Interestingly, all five of these farms had at least one significant epidemiological link. A common rendering truck routinely made a circuit of these farms picking up their daily mortality. On March the 21st, it became apparent that this was not just going to be a localized outbreak. A turkey grow out farm located more than 30 miles north of the index farm and belonging to a different company was diagnosed positive on that day. This graph shows the daily occurrence of newly diagnosed flocks and demonstrates a typical epidemiological curve for an outbreak of a contagious disease. Note the rapid rise in numbers of cases occurring per day which peaked in about mid-May, declined steadily thereafter and ended with the last confirmed new positive case on July the 2nd. The avian influenza task force was activated about one month into the outbreak and played a significant role in finding infected farms through surveillance, monitoring the depopulation and disposal of the affected flocks and in general providing the logistical support necessary for this massive undertaking. Good afternoon. As Dr. Ake noted earlier, the Virginia avian influenza outbreak began in early March. Despite control measures taken by the state and affected industry, this disease spread rapidly. The index case was depopulated on a voluntary basis and buried on site, but by March 28th enhanced surveillance had identified 20 more positive flocks. State officials worked with company officials and producers to implement control measures. During this period, control slaughter of affected flocks was permitted. By April 12th, 60 flocks were affected with 30 flocks pending depopulation and disposal. At this point, state officials asked for USDA assistance and on April 14th an initial advance team of 23 USDA personnel arrived in Harrisonburg. Within the next week, the full task force was activated and was comprised of about 200 personnel at any one time. Within the first week, barrel or dead bird surveillance was initiated to test every flock in the area each week, in addition to other testing required by the state. On the first round, 12 additional positive flocks were detected. West Virginia, just across the state border, also has large commercial and breeder flocks owned and serviced by the same companies. In May, we had a single positive case in West Virginia. State officials acted very quickly to depopulate and dispose of this flock and intensive surveillance was implemented. No other positive flocks were diagnosed in West Virginia during the course of this outbreak. The last positive case in Virginia was found on July 2nd, but enhanced surveillance will continue into December. The primary efforts of the task force were aimed at disposal, surveillance, and buyer security. Disposal was probably the most difficult issue confronting the industry and the task force with more than 4.7 million carcasses requiring disposal. With public and state environmental concerns, disposal was completed utilizing landfills and air curtain incinerators. Although the loading and transport of the birds to disposal sites was done by company personnel, task force personnel carried out C&D measures at both the farm and the disposal sites. Weekly barrel surveillance was important in determining the disease status of every flock. In all, 14 rounds of testing were completed. Sample testing occurred in both state and federal laboratories. The Harrisonburg Virginia Regional Laboratory tested more than 10,000 samples per week at the height of the outbreak. A great deal of effort was made to strengthen buyer security measures to reduce the chances of disease spread. Site visits were made to review buyer security plans and practices at the farm level in efforts to prevent disease entry. An incident command post was established in the first few weeks of the response as a headquarters for the task force. Computer hardware and data networks were implemented to support more than 200 users. The mission of the task force was to assist the state of Virginia in controlling this disease outbreak in this very highly concentrated poultry area. Control measures were taken to lessen potential trade ramifications and to lessen the chances of this H7N2 virus from mutating into a highly pathogenic strain. The safety of our personnel and the public and adherence to strict buyer security measures were priorities. The incident command system was utilized from the onset of this response. Experienced Forest Service personnel provided us with a great deal of assistance in the organization and functioning of ICS. The old radio structure was easily transformed into an ICS structure with its five major sections. A command staff, a planning section, finance and administration section, a logistics section, and an operations section. The incident command staff included direct support personnel, liaison personnel, public affairs, and safety officers. The planning section included program and technical specialties such as disease reporting, epidemiology, and lab coordination. This section monitored disease status and program progress and was charged with both short and long-term planning. Logistics were primarily managed by experienced Forest Service personnel who acquired and maintained supplies for the task force. Finance and administration made purchases, tracked expenses, and provided administrative direction and oversight. The operations section included those primarily responsible for field activities such as surveillance, diagnosis, and inspection, euthanasia, and C&D. A number of daily meetings were held under the incident command system to ensure adequate communication among the members of the task force. All task force members met at 7 or 8 a.m. each morning and planning meetings were held each evening with commanders and section chiefs to review operational activities for the next 24-hour period. This is a slide of a daily briefing meeting to ensure that all participants were updated. Industry representatives were welcome at these meetings and often participated with individual section meetings as well. Planning meetings were held each evening to review next-day activities and to ensure these activities could be supported with adequate personnel and equipment. Over the course of this response, 766 individuals served on the task force. They came from 46 states and Puerto Rico. Although USDA and the Commonwealth of Virginia provided approximately 60% of the personnel, the Department of Health and Human Services provided 168 personnel from their DMAT and VMAAT teams as well as volunteers from CDC, FDA, Public Health Service and other public agencies. The U.S. Forest Service provided personnel to assist in implementing the incident command system and logistical support. The Department of Defense also provided technical support in a number of areas. Most task force members served on two or three-week rotations. Several countries sent visitors to the task force and two Mexican veterinary officials served for a month. In addition, veterinarians from other states and retired USDA veterinarians also volunteered to serve. The cooperation and commitment of all of these personnel remained exceedingly high despite 10 to 12-hour workdays and weekend work. Under the ICS, a joint command structure with the State Veterinarian's Office and Veterinary Services was established. From my view, this worked exceedingly well and decisions were made jointly throughout this response. Task force actions were taken under state authorities with federal support. USDA has spent $11.3 million to date in this response. An additional $69 million has been approved for indemnity payments to both growers and owners. The U.S. Forest Service provided key support throughout the response, especially with expertise in the logistics and supply section. As an example, approximately 50,000 sets of Tyvek suit packages were distributed during this response by the logistics section. U.S. Army Veterinary Corps personnel provided considerable assistance in laboratory support, epidemiology, biosecurity, and field operations. This is a picture of some of the volunteers provided to the Department of Health and Human Services, some of whom came back on a number of rotations with the task force. Orientation and training were required of every individual serving on the task force. General orientations were given on the day of arrival and specific training was provided by individual sections. After completing four weeks of intensive surveillance without finding a positive case, the task force was reduced considerably in size. We are maintaining staff to continue enhanced surveillance, finalize the record systems, and for the general close down. Plans are also in place to activate experienced task force members should additional infection be found. In addition, we are working with a number of individuals to plan epidemiological studies, utilizing the data obtained from this outbreak in response. And we are hopeful we can answer some fundamental questions about this disease and the most appropriate strategies for combating outbreaks in the future. In a world of convenience stores, megaplexes, and electronic commerce, modern society's relationship with the air, land, and water vital to our very survival often seems removed and intangible. But for many Native American cultures, the natural world is still held in reverence and recognizes integral to their very being. Even in today's changing world, these cultures routinely depend on the earth to provide subsistence for their families. Creating a more personal relationship with nature, one based on respect and balanced on faith. For the Uroch tribe of California, this balance resonates back for countless generations. Unlike many other tribes, the Uroch were never forced to relocate from much of their native territory and still inhabit the homeland of their ancestors. Along California's northern coast and upstream from the mouth of the state's second largest river, the Klamath. The Klamath River is extremely important to the Uroch people as we are a fishing tribe and we depend very heavily on the resources of the river, including spring and fall, Chinook, steelhead, sturgeon. As a people, we depend on the Klamath River not only for a food source but for spiritual well-being and it's extremely important to us as a people for both of those reasons. For thousands of years and hundreds of generations, the Uroch people have depended on the Klamath River and the annual harvest of migrating fish, particularly salmon. The river is inseparably tied to their culture. Homes and villages are situated near the water and many of the Uroch's religious ceremonies revolve around the river and its bounty. Although the bond between the Uroch and the Klamath has ancient roots, the river is still susceptible to the same ecological threats facing the rest of today's world. The Uroch realized this and have created strong environmental programs to protect and manage these resources. The Uroch Tribes Department of Fisheries helps to regulate and evaluate the Klamath and its aquatic life from the Pacific Ocean upstream 40 miles to the reservation boundary. The staff of 60 scientists and technicians monitor water quantity and quality in the river and its tributaries, along with regulating the tribe's annual allotment of harvestable fish. The department also collects data on juvenile and adult fish as they migrate up and down the watershed throughout their life cycle. The impact that non-human life, like marine mammals, makes on the Klamath fish is also studied as part of a total ecosystem assessment program. Naturally, any threat to the quality of the river's water is considered a threat to the Uroch way of life. That's why the tribe's environmental program managers contacted the California Integrated Waste Management Board when an illegal dump was discovered on one of the hills overlooking the river. Subsequent investigation by the board revealed that the dump also contained elevated levels of hazardous wastes. Basically, they asked us about two years ago if the funds were available to remediate this facility. We approved funding for this and we began the cleanup process. During that process, we discovered that the ash underneath the trash was hazardous. At that point, we elected to go to US EPA to find out if they could assist us in the cleanup program. Our role here is kind of the lead agency. US EPA is coming in as a specialized subcontractor to remove the hazardous wastes and to assist us in removing the hazards and we'll take care of the solid wastes. Most of the contamination came from old batteries. Lead is predominantly the constituent that we're looking at, although there is some spots where we've had hits on zinc and mercury and I'm not sure what the source of those would be, but lead, it's obvious from the number of broken batteries that have been uncovered and segregated from the wastes that that's where the lead came from. Thirty years of illegal dumping and then burning household trash on the hillside resulted in approximately 900 cubic yards of lead contaminated burn ash and soil concentrated into an eight to 24 inch layer below the visible household waste. Unfortunately, cleaning up the site wasn't simple. The trash was spread across three acres on an extremely steep slope that rendered most traditional cleanup methods unfeasible. The unique system that the California Integrated Waste Management Board devised to tackle the job was a hybrid specifically developed for extreme gradients. We removed all the material on the bottom staged that out and then at that time we started excavating out the bottom created benches to work our way up to the slope to about not about a third of the slope up. Then utilizing two bulldozers, one tethered to the other via a heavy cable and winch system which acted as a safety and pullback line, the trash was pushed two-thirds of the way down the hill where it could be safely handled in a more conventional manner. You have one on the side of the hill, the other one is cabled to it. It's kind of a yo-yo system between the two. It's very effective in getting the material off of extremely steep slopes and it's a very safe way of doing it. Basically, it removes the material within a very short amount of time. After enough material was stockpiled near the bottom of the slope, the debris was moved down the remainder of the hill using more traditional techniques. Here the material was also sampled by EPA's Technical Assistance Team to help segregate hazardous from non-hazardous materials. What we're doing is going in after the bulldozers push the trash down to the bottom of the hill and checking those areas to make sure that all the contaminants have been removed. We're also making sure that we don't have hazardous materials in the non-hazardous piles and we're making sure that the segregated material, we have an idea of what the concentration is there so we can use that for our profile preparation with the disposal facilities. To accurately measure metal concentrations in the samples, X-ray fluorescence or XRF instrumentation was used. The portable XRF monitor has the ability to screen samples and give results on site, making waste stream segregation more efficient. Throughout the job the best interests of the tribe were considered. UROC council members made regular visits to the site to check on the progress and provide input. When I came out here to see how the project was going, you know I was really pleased to see that we have a pretty good turnout of Native Americans working here and so that makes me feel good to know that somehow, some way, we had a part in getting our people to work on our sites. The Indian people really have a strong interest in the environment and working with the EPA people were able to clean these sites up because especially on the climate river everything comes drains into the creeks which the creeks were going to our river and the steepness of it. It always affects our rivers in one way or another and then we have some of the best salmon in the world coming up here on the climate river and we're poison them in a way by letting these things happen especially with all the toxic stuff now and it's really important that we keep our rivers clean because it's just like our main bloodstream is the river. Long-range goals call for returning the site as closely as possible to its previous condition. When all the garbage and all the hazardous material have been removed from the site the integrated waste management board is then going to put in erosion controls and reseed the area to prevent erosion and then eventually hopefully the native plants will start growing back into the area. To help prevent any future illegal dumping in the valley the tribe in partnership with the California Integrated Waste Management Board has also opened a transfer station and developed an educational program along with stepping up enforcement. As UROC people we have always since time beginning had a great respect for the world and the place that we live in so it's extremely important to us that we not have illegal dumping or any dumping in the area that we live in so it's our responsibility and we have developed dumping ordinances and we currently are looking at our court system and making sure that it's capable of making sure the laws are abated in our homeland. The alliance formed between the UROC people and the state and federal agencies during the cleanup helped the tribe see results of the site that on their own might have been impossible. In this day and time it would have been cost prohibitive for the tribe to even begin to think about cleaning the dump site up on their own so it was natural for us to look towards EPA service to look for them for assistance in this area and then to look to the state agency so it was extremely important that whenever we can we look for partnerships or coalitions that can help us to accomplish our goals. This partnership also provided EPA and the state of California the unique opportunity to help preserve a centuries old way of life even if in a small way while cleaning up a threat to the environment. Hopefully the UROC people and their relationship with the Klamath River will continue to prosper and grow for generations to come. What we are going to do once all that stuff is out of the polls is we'll go back and we'll take a closer look at those souls. It's incumbent on us to let the public especially those individuals that live in the immediate area of this laboratory to let them know where we are what stage of the cleanup how much longer we're going to be here. I believe that the EPA is going to the full depth of this and then get to the very bottom of it get everything cleaned up. They have come to a complete trust with Team Flora. We've become part of the community the community has become part of us and again that that whole team concept has overflowed from the site into the community. The relationship forged between the people of Newport Tennessee and the cleanup team at the Flora site proved that a community faced with a major hazardous waste site in their backyard could work productively with EPA. In fact cooperation has made the unenviable process of sampling, treating and disposing of over 700 damaged gas cylinders and thousands of suspect chemical containers a success for Team Flora. Sort of a motto here at the site and it's called Team Flora and it's an adage we picked up early on and it maintains that meaning throughout the entire cleanup it's been a long arduous road. That road began at the former Rock Hill laboratory opened in 1959 as a Cold War era research and development facility the 15,000 square foot building housing 12 labs changed hands a number of times through the years until Flora chemical was established in 1988 to manufacture specialty gases. As a result of a 1999 inspection and the failure of management to comply EPA shut down Flora chemical and began a removal action in April of 2000. There were thousands of haphazardly stored chemical compounds many of which were classified as deadly or shock sensitive. One lab in particular housed over 1600 chemical containers with many incompatible materials stored adjacent to each other geophysical surveys on the 53-acre parcel also revealed lab packs containing PCBs, phosphine cylinders and other glassware buried in sinkholes around the site. On top of this inspectors discovered 23 cylinders of perfluoroisobutylene or PFIB a chemical weapon with no known commercial application when inhaled PFIB attacks lung tissue causing painful injury or even death. We found shock sensitive materials stored next to acids we found weapons of mass destruction that were stored in a garden shed. Team Flora went to work evaluating and categorizing the waste streams initially cylinders and chemical containers were assessed to determine how they could be handled and stored to efficiently sample and hascat the materials existing labs in the main building were modified to allow pH oxidation flammability and air reactivity tests to protect nearby residents during operations EPA's environmental response team performed perimeter air monitoring in the unlikely event that a release or fire did occur during sampling an early warning system utilizing an air horn was installed.  The U.S. Coast Guard strike team was on board for additional safety support and site documentation. The team also served as a federal presence in the absence of the EPA on-scene coordinator. For the risky assignment of cylinder sampling work was performed in fully encapsulated level A personal protective suits. Well to work in level A generally means that you're dealing with with a substance that's pretty nasty or you're not real sure about. Level A work is arduous it's cumbersome it requires a great deal of support and planning on the front end you just don't hop into a level A suit and go work. The method we used here involved a five man team and that was to expedite what we're handling. Initially the first step is to assess the cylinders whether they're even safe to handle or to store in their current condition. After cleaning the valves and grounding the cylinder a custom stainless steel sampling manifold was attached and the exacting process of sampling each of the 700 plus unknown cylinders began. As each sample is taken you have a certain very small volume of the gas the unknown gas that is extracted into a manifold system. Once we have charged or partially charged the sample chamber we're ready to actually extract the sample. We use special gas sampling syringes to do this. One syringe then remained in the sampling lab for HASCAT testing while the other was delivered to the on-site analytical laboratory. A support team played the crucial role of ensuring the safety of anyone entering the hot zone. During level A entries an additional rescue team stood by in case an emergency situation developed. I couldn't ask for a better group of people I've got some of the best technical know-how behind me that any OSC across the country could want and if it wasn't for that level of expertise we certainly couldn't get this job done. In the event a cylinder valve was inoperable and couldn't be sampled using the manifold cryogenics were utilized. If the cylinder or container was beyond the use of even cryogenics it was placed in a pressurized sampling apparatus dubbed Kilroy where it could be safely breached, sampled and then treated. Another existing lab was modified to serve as an on-site analytical laboratory. Samples were transferred to a technician via a sealed glove box and were then analyzed using FTIR and gas chromatograph mass spectrometer instrumentation. With the on-site lab sampling teams could have full analysis within 20 minutes allowing samples to be segregated safely into groups for later treatment. For the shock-sensitive chemicals which had gone beyond their recommended shelf life and couldn't be transported off-site the team conducted control shocking. Shocking these we would generally get an energetic effect in a resulting fire or small detonation. The resulting fire from those we controlled using normal firefighting techniques also to minimize the size of it and allowed them to react off. Because the bulk of the waste was halogenated organics and many cylinders were not DOT shippable, Team Flora opted to treat much of the waste on-site. The first treatment system designed on-site Lv1 or the E1 was intended to treat PFIV the weapon of mass destruction. As best as we could ascertain from various governmental sources there had never been a successful accountable treatment of this material so we were up to quite a challenge here on this site in that we had very limited information. In the E1 treatment vessel the PFIV goes through pyrolysis which is a chemical change brought about by the action of heat. The process causes flooring to be removed from the carbon chain as well as decomposing the carbon chain itself. Then through hydrolysis water vapor is introduced to form the more manageable byproducts carbon dioxide and hydrofluorine. The hydrofluorine is still dangerous so it's injected into a reactor of calcium hydroxide. The resulting reaction neutralizes the hydrofluorine to form the waste product calcium fluoride which is essentially table salt. The only byproduct then being safely discharged is the carbon dioxide. The Lv1 system proved so effective of the PFIV that our site leadership decided to treat the other halogenated organics that we had on-site which accounted for approximately 200 cylinders. Because of the high yields achieved by the E1 system Team Flora designed and built the larger E2 which had an identical treatment system but could now treat up to five cylinders at once. The stepped up system allowed the remainder of halogenated organic cylinders to be treated in a period of five weeks. To treat acid gases Team Flora once again designed and built their own treatment system dubbed heartburn mostly using components available on site. The heartburn system utilized a 5000 gallon stainless steel tank situated at the bottom of a natural sinkhole to prevent any vapor drift in the event of contaminant failure. Inside the tank a pump circulates calcium hydroxide. The acid gas is introduced and reacts with the solution is neutralized and forms calcium salt and water vapor. The calcium salt collects in the bottom of the reaction vessel. Any residual vapor is pulled off the headspace and sent through a secondary treatment tank where it is scrubbed with sodium hydroxide before being safely vented into the atmosphere. Also placed in the sinkhole was the thermal destruction unit or TDU which through the combination of thermal decomposition with air scrubbing treated off-spec flammable gases and residual gases not pulled from cylinders by E1 or E2. Because the main structure which housed the laboratories at Flora was contaminated beyond any practical decontamination it was decided to raise the building. I think everybody was looking forward to seeing these buildings destroyed. He didn't bring in a lot of specialty equipment. We just have a track loader with a with a demolition bucket that can grab and move things around. We have a track excavator that has a thumb attachment. A thumb attachment is more of a gravity and a weight thing in that it just falls up against the other bucket as you pick things up and they're quite a bit less expensive. The team still had to deal with the buried waste scattered in pits around the facility. Because of the site's history the potentially shock sensitive waste was excavated semi remotely. We're using a large excavator with blast shield protection essentially trenching and increments of six inches. When the waste is uncovered myself or another competent individual that has a lot of experience with identifying waste will make a call as to whether it is handled at all by human hands or whether the excavator does all the handling. If the team suspects that containers are shock sensitive the excavator methodically unearths the waste and places it in a specially fabricated stainless steel box on a crush table. Suspect containers are then crushed with the help of the modified excavator. We have an acid gas react. These doors are immediately closed and we have a vertical counterflow scrubber that we manufactured on site that connects to this and will treat these gases. The accomplishments made by Team Flora during the two plus year cleanup were impressive. Literally thousands of cylinders and chemical containers were sampled, cascaded and treated all on site. But no matter the task the number one priority was safety. Not only the safety of the community but the safety and well-being of personnel working every day handling the myriad of containers and cylinders. What initially seemed like an insurmountable task concluded safely and successfully. When I first became involved with the cleanup here I characterized this site as a sleeping giant. The way I look at that now is that we got our hands around that giant and we dealt with it and it's not the big threat it was a year ago but that is a direct function of surrounding yourselves you know with experts thinking through problems and teamwork and all those elements came together here at Flora seamlessly and we're looking forward to going home here real soon. Our countdown for launch of the Spatial Columbia on Mission STS 107 is continuing on schedule this morning. The investigation by NASA into the cause of the Spatial Columbia accident on Saturday February 1st 2003 has been called the biggest and most complicated puzzle in aviation and aeronautics history. Shortly after the accident President Bush enacted an emergency declaration for the states of Texas and Louisiana and then called on FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate the shuttle response and recovery effort with federal state and local governments and volunteer agencies. In turn FEMA designated US EPA lead agency for the collection removal and data management of potentially hazardous Spatial Columbia materials. We got our support people in here and we started operating on Saturday afternoon on a 24-hour basis and then things quickly escalated and so we obviously had to get additional help and not only did we go to our backup regions but essentially went on a national basis to bring in additional OSCs from around the country to assist region six in this effort. When Columbia broke apart during its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere materials scattered over a 10 mile by 240 mile corridor stretching from eastern Texas into western Louisiana an area larger than the state of West Virginia. EPA's aspect or airborne spectral photo-imaging of environmental contaminants technology aircraft initiated air operations the day of the accident to locate potentially hazardous materials. We flew roughly from the base of operation here in Waxahatchee, Texas down to Morgan City, Alvora, Louisiana and then up to Shreveport looking primarily for monomethyl hydrazine in the atmosphere. What we do is we we have two sensors one is an infrared line scanner that paints an image of the plume or the cloud and a high-speed Fourier transform infrared spectrometer that we use to actually query the plume make compound identification and quantitation. From the results of that flight we didn't detect any of that material which is beneficial from a public health sample. EPA's TAGA or Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer a self-contained mobile laboratory was also put into service. The TAGA lab was able to collect real-time outdoor air quality samples at extremely low concentrations while driving through east Texas. Results of the TAGA revealed no detectable levels of hazardous substances. FEMA established a disaster field office in Lufkin, Texas as headquarters for all federal and state response agencies. Early on we established three major objectives for this operation. The first one was to ensure public safety. That's basically to find the hazardous areas and hazardous material and neutralize it and render it safe and the second was retrieve the human remains and the third one is to gather evidence for the investigation. Estimated to be the largest deployment of civilian government agencies in history, the recovery has drawn close to 5600 people from 39 states. EPA alone has dispatched 900 responders to the scene. To ensure the recovery would run smoothly, FEMA tasked the Texas Forest Service to implement the incident command system bringing all responding agencies together under one authority. The incident command system really allows agencies with different missions to come together and work for common effort and it has five functions, command, operations, planning, logistics, and finance and everything that occurs on an incident occurs under one of those five functions. Environmental Protection Agency is one of those that has made an effort to adopt the incident command system and it was much easier to fold them into the operation than maybe some of the other agencies. The operation which we're involved has had two fairly distinct but overlapping phases. Initially our mission was to collect materials and service requests from citizens and we had a very large number of requests for that. EPA has a variety of resources available here. We've been able to use the Gulf Strike team from Coast Guard. We have a huge number of contractor resources, both our start contractor and our ERS contractor, and we use a very large number of EPA employees. Phase one ground recovery consisted of 60 on-scene coordinator-led teams operating from five regional base camps each working with a multi-county jurisdiction. We have the seven county areas surrounding this area where we're coordinating all of the collection activities in the counties. We have on-scene coordinators in each of the counties working with the county officials trying to coordinate and prioritize the locations that material need to be picked up. Today's been going fairly smoothly. We're assigned regions within the county and given points to go and collect material that's already been flagged in GPS to forest and basically our crews going in behind the original crews that ID'd the material and we are taking down information and going ahead and bagging and tagging those items.  We do a PID photo ionization detector for volatile organics. If it's an unknown, we'll scan it for radiation. We will then take our GPS unit and find the exact location. We'll go ahead and label it with an evidence board, take a take a digital picture of it and then we'll bag it. There's a mark right there in the field. There's two of them. On the average we process or what we call clear approximately 10 to 15 sites per day by working methodically through our sector like all the other teams do. The goal is to clear out a county I would say an average county over the course of three to five days. Materials received by the four regional collection sites in Palestine, Lacedocious, Corsicana and Hamphill were then shipped to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana before being forwarded to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final identification. Until the cause of the Columbia accident was determined, all future shuttle missions were indefinitely grounded. Driven by the knowledge that each piece of debris from the smallest to the largest might provide the missing clue investigators were looking for, responders were non-stop through the rain and cold, searching the thickets, pastures and piney woods of East Texas. The interagency cooperation during the massive undertaking was unprecedented. NASA's familiar with dealing with other federal agencies but I'll have to tell you that I believe that this event has brought more agencies together in the shortest period of time that I've ever experienced and has put together a team that has just really performed in an excellent manner. The coordination and cooperation has been excellent. As part of that multi-agency effort, EPA dive teams also assisted with underwater search and recovery efforts. Today's task is the investigation of an Iowa witness report of a piece of shuttle material hitting the small pond behind me. Now the unit is doing a wade through in the shallow area where the heavy weeds are with underwater metal detector to confirm what we've tried as best we could to look at everything possible as far as a small one-acre pond. The U.S. Navy coordinated dive team operations from the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas Louisiana border. 145 responders from nine federal, state and local agencies collaborated to search the cold murky waters. EPA's environmental response dive team utilized side scan sonar on the lake to help pinpoint potential search targets. The tools we're utilizing on this is side scan sonar which sends a high frequency sound wave across the lake bottom in depths of 10 to 50 feet of water and sends an image back to us real time on a screen which we can then evaluate, record, further evaluate to determine those images that appear most likely to be a man-made object. We have identified targets we consider high priority which we will then further evaluate with ROVs and divers which includes EPA divers from region seven out of Kansas City as well as my dive team out of Edison, New Jersey along with other state county and federal dive units. By mid-February phase two of the search effort was underway with over 3,500 wildfire fighters trained in pattern search procedures scouring the 33,000 square mile recovery zone. At the request of the Texas Forest Service large base camps were erected near the four incident command posts each housing upwards of 1,000 responders. To manage the large crews now needed for the phase two ground recovery the Forest Service again utilized the incident command system. We brought in four incident management teams which are made up of 30 to 50 trained personnel trained in implementing the incident command system and then we have brought in 3,000 searchers that are comprised of 20 person hand crews. These are the crews that go out in the field and suppress the fires. The objective today is to complete the area inside the game fence line using the search techniques working from the west to the east towards us. My role in this operation is a group supervisor responsible for the management of the resources assigned to this group in this search grid pattern that we have uh right now we have about 180 people out searching. We have about four strike teams is what it equates to we've set up the grid technique and from search and rescue folks that have given us some direction and we've implemented that in the field and we move from grid to grid day to day and the object is to always move forward or in a new direction. An EPA team accompanies each squad to inspect bag tag and catalog material. EPA is also tasked with the data management of recovered shuttle materials. Information about each piece is first loaded into PDAs in the field. Then that same evening the data is uploaded to a web-based server making the data available for analysis by NASA to refine the search strategy and aid in the investigation. The space shuttle Columbia contained a number of potentially hazardous liquids and gases used as fuel and coolant including hydrazine, monomethyl hydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide and hydrosammonia, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Whenever hazardous materials were located special remediation teams were dispatched to secure the site and mitigate any threat. These EPA led teams were assisted by other federal and state response agencies trained in hazardous materials remediation. The particular piece of debris that we're here for is a titanium spherical cylinder that was used to hold an oxidant as part of the thruster system for the Columbia. EPA is supplying some of the the technical expertise and the civil support team is supplying the actual manpower to do the actual operation and the treatment work in this case. The product inside is nitrogen tetroxide which is one of the more dangerous chemicals that have been found on the shuttle. What we've been asked to do is come out here and do some hasty mitigation on it and what we're going to do is we're going to pull the the cylinder away from the affected ground and we're going to heat the the actual ball of the sphere up with either halogen lights or some other source of heat so it'll help off-gas the product inside. The Texas Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service and NASA also coordinated extensive air search operations over the debris field. In clear weather, air crews covered close to 2,000 miles a day. 36 helicopter and 10 fixed-wing aircraft flew search grids making passes at treetop and ground level. Helicopter crews also retrieved items for preliminary inspection. If geography made touchdown difficult, material location was GPS'd and forwarded to ground recovery crews. As of April 9th, over 60,000 shuttle debris items had been retrieved and delivered to Kennedy Space Center, truly a testament to the long hours and commitment made by every responder. The tragedy of why we're here is sad but the outcome of this is absolutely heartwarming and uplifted. I think our ability to to hit the ground and get energized and be up to full speed in the time frame that we've done is is just really a tribute to the cooperation and the leadership that we've seen in these various teams. They've just done a great job. They're still excited about coming out every day. You know there's always the possibility that we're going to find something very, very significant. I think that drives them every day and they understand the the significance of this tragedy that's happened. They keep them going. Our goal and our mission here is protection of public health and the environment. That's precisely what we're doing. Many people say from many perspectives that this is unprecedented in nature and I think there's certainly truth to that. For example, we have not worked with NASA before. We're very saddened by the circumstances which have brought us together here. However, the teamwork has been really quite excellent.


The House of Representatives has mandated its committees on justice, public petition and police affairs to investigate the involvement of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abu Bakr Malami, S.A.N. And the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, in the crisis over the ownership of the land in Magudo, Jarirofis, to Lagos State. According to the resolution of the House at Plenari on Wednesday, Malami and Baba are to be investigated over their alleged attempt to destabilize the peace of the state, scuttle the ongoing settlement process and enforce an illegality. The Joint Committee is also expected to recommend the appropriate sanction for any officer found culpable in the illegal reinforcement and breakdown of law and order. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Right, Adam. What are you doing here today? Yeah, it's good. It's just sort of getting started with the signing now and we've been on stage and seeing how many kids there are and all the smiles on their faces. So, it's started to be enjoyable and we'll just see how the night progresses.


We are better because we have people from around the world who join us here, and Microsoft is such a fantastic example of how when people come from around the world they can create more jobs for British Columbians and for Canadians, they can transfer that talent and that knowledge that stays here and enriches us.  And we have to invest in giving British Columbians the skills and the knowledge that they need to build the future, and that's why we've been so focused on our tech industry. This is big news for Microsoft, but it's also big news for Vancouver, for British Columbia, and for Canada as a whole. Microsoft's decision to add as many as 350 new development jobs to their Vancouver operations is a real vote of confidence in the community and in the talent and expertise of Canadian workers. We are here because we're committed to Vancouver. We believe in the future of British Columbia. We believe in the future of Canada. We believe in investing in a technology hub and ecosystem. We believe in opportunities to connect Vancouver and Seattle and build new bridges across the border in ways that will help both of our countries and our economies and our people move forward. Just think about what we now have the opportunity to do. Microsoft Vancouver, congratulations. We're so proud of all the work that you do. You make us so much better. Well done.