Emergency Response and Preparedness Services
Tetra Tech has supported the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund Technical Assessment and Response Team (START) program in several regions across the country for 15 years. This program involves providing technical assistance to EPA’s emergency response and preparedness mission related to natural disasters, man-made incidents, and technological hazards. Tetra Tech has also supported oil and hazardous substance removal actions, site assessments, counterterrorism support, and training. In the past five years Tetra Tech has completed nearly 2,500 START assignments, including about 500 emergency responses; 300 removal actions; 1,000 Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act and brownfields site assessments; and many other projects involving emergency preparedness training and exercises, data management, risk assessments, and public outreach.
Tetra Tech maintains a network of fully trained and experienced emergency response staff, able to provide response services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also maintain a fleet of response vehicles and warehouses filled with specialized equipment. Our workers have logged 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, for weeks at a time during national emergencies. We have provided emergency response support for industrial plant explosions, chemical fires, train derailments, oil spills, pipeline ruptures, clandestine drug laboratory operations, and natural disasters.
For each event, Tetra Tech developed a pre-deployment emergency management plan in the case of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incident; provided on-site monitoring assistance; and worked with representatives from federal, state, and local emergency management agencies.
Other key projects include developing and conducting more than 50 full-scale counterterrorism and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, And Explosive (CBRNE) training exercises for state and local emergency managers; providing emergency management and reconstruction planning services to two county task forces in Pennsylvania; and supporting the development and implementation of EPA’s ASPECT technology decision support tool for detecting and characterizing hazardous releases from an airborne device.
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“Owing to the outstanding quality of service, especially in regards to counterterrorism activities, the government is extremely confident that should there be a need for a critical response, [Tetra Tech] would provide outstanding technical response support. In fact, they have become an invaluable asset to the region’s emergency response program.” —EPA contract performance review