RALEIGH -- Bryan E. Beatty, Secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control & Public Safety and North Carolina's designated Homeland Security Coordinator, is presenting the keys this week for a new, more powerful vehicle for the N.C. Hazardous Materials Regional Response Team (RRT-6) based in Asheville. The presentation will take place Thursday, September 5th at 10:00 in front of the Asheville Fire Department, 100 Court Plaza, in downtown Asheville.

The team is specially trained and equipped to deal with a chemical spill or possible terrorism incident. The team serves Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Madison, Macon, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey counties.

"With a bigger engine upgrade from 250 horse power to 425 horse power under their hood, RRT-6 will be able to decrease their response time in some of the more remote, mountainous counties," said Sec. Beatty. "The truck has the largest engine available with automatic transmission, and has manually deployed traction chains to improve travel on icy roads."

The state's seven regional response teams, known as RRTs, are located in Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Durham, Fayetteville, Williamston and Wilmington. Each RRT member has more than 200 hours of training dealing with hazardous materials and weapons of mass destruction. The teams are not clean-up crews, but respond to supplement the efforts of local government hazardous materials teams in incidents beyond the capabilities of the first responders. If the state activates a team to assist a local community, the state reimburses the RRT host city for the use of the equipment and the team members' time.

RRT-6 is composed of 63 members and will travel in a single-axle tractor-trailer especially designed for them. Built by Hackney & Sons in Washington, N.C., the rig is loaded with all the equipment needed to identify, contain, and stop a chemical leak. Each truck carries four levels of chemical suits to protect team members from hazardous chemicals and chemical warfare agents. The total cost to equip one RRT is more than $750,000. Funding for the RRT comes from a variety of federal and state sources including state terrorism funding and federal weapons of mass destruction dollars.

The trailer portion of the vehicle houses a command center filled with land and satellite communications, a weather station and computers. The team will have a vast database of information on chemicals at their fingertips in the command center. The unit also carries a 25-kw generator to provide auxiliary power at the incident scene. A map of the RRT coverage areas for the entire state is available on Emergency Management's web page at www.ncem.org/HazMat/rrtpage2.htm.