Known predominantly as an ecotourism destination, Costa Rica spreads across 19,700 square miles and a population of a tick over 5 million. About half its population, 2.3 million, live in the capital San Jose or the surrounding metro areas.

Like many countries of its size, Costa Rica has a national fire service. There are 90 fire stations across the country that collectively respond to more than 50,000 calls per year.

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While the fire department uses a mix of career and volunteer firefighters, the hazmat team is made up of 14 career firefighters trained to the hazmat specialist level. As the country shifted from a mostly agricultural economy (bananas and coffee primarily) to its own manufacturing and luring foreign manufacturers to its Free Trade Zone, the government enacted a law making the fire service responsible for hazmat emergencies.

In 1998, the hazmat team was born. The boom in the chemical industry forced the fire department to begin training and purchasing equipment to effectively deal with this type of emergency. It is headquartered in San Jose, and responds to calls nationwide.

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The team prides itself on being highly trained and equipped with the latest technology. All 14 are instructors for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and many receive training from different parts of the United States and Europe.

The hazmat team trains three times per week, often with OPCW. One of the team’s creative approaches to training is to use swimming pools to simulate a hazmat emergency in rivers or lakes.

Their main piece of equipment is a Marion 2020 unit designed exclusively for firefighters in Costa Rica. They have auxiliary first response teams equipped in the country’s north, south, Atlantic and Pacific zones. They have four trailers with first-intervention equipment. Getting enough equipment is the team’s biggest challenge.

The team says its biggest victory was designing hazardous materials technician training in accordance with NFPA standards for the other members of the Costa Rica Fire Department.