RALEIGH -- Bryan E. Beatty, Secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control & Public Safety and North Carolina's designated Homeland Security Coordinator, today announced that a seventh N.C. Hazardous Materials Regional Response Team (RRT) will begin operation in Mecklenburg County and the surrounding counties June 1st. The team is specially trained and equipped to deal with a chemical spill or possible terrorism incident. The Department has awarded a contract to the Charlotte Fire Department to staff the new RRT-7. The Charlotte-based team will serve Alexander, Anson, Cabarrus, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Rowan, Stanly, and Union counties.

"The regional response team concept has worked extremely well since its inception in 1994," said Sec. Beatty. "The addition of the seventh team gives us more resources to respond to emergencies, and should decrease the response time in some of the more remote counties."

The first six regional response teams, known as RRTs, are located in Asheville, Greensboro, Durham, Fayetteville, Williamston and Wilmington. Each RRT member has more than 200 hours of training in 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. Until the new RRT unit is delivered, Charlotte will be using their HazMat 1 and 2 units for state-authorized RRT missions.

The new RRT-7 is composed of 36 members and will travel in 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 unit 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 on chemicals at their fingertips in the command center. The unit also carries a 25kw generator providing 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.