Operations & Incident Management

The vehicle you're working on looks routine… until the cryogenic leak starts pooling where you can't see it … until you realize it isn’t just gasoline on fire, it’s mostly alcohol …until you can’t remember if this is the kind of cylinder you always put water on, or was it never?

More than 33 million vehicles on America's roadways use alternative fuels, and that number is climbing. Compressed natural gas. Hydrogen. High-alcohol blends. Fully electric drivetrains. Each presents hazards that don't announce themselves the way gasoline fires do. The 2024 CNG explosion that injured nine LAFD firefighters, two of them critically, wasn't an equipment failure. It was what happens when invisible risks meet standard tactics.

This session introduces a universal five-step approach: Approach, Identify, Immobilize, Disable, Access. This system works at any motor vehicle incident regardless of what's powering it. You won't leave with a catalog of vehicle-specific tech specs you'll forget by next shift. You'll leave with a systematic method to recognize what's different before it becomes dangerous: odorless gas leaks, clear-burning fires, thermal runaway cycles that restart days after knockdown, and pressure systems that can turn routine cooling tactics into catastrophic failures.

We'll work through real cases that show what changes when you stop assuming fuel type and start applying a repeatable assessment framework. Whether you're first on scene at a collision, running extrication, or managing overhaul after a vehicle fire, this approach helps you identify fuel-specific risks without getting paralyzed by the complexity.

A fuel cell car after a collision. A forklift leaking inside a warehouse. A transit bus burning beside its dispenser. Each involves hydrogen, but each demands a different response. Can your meter detect the leak? Where will a venting tank discharge? What changes when the vehicle incident also involves a fueling facility?

Building on the five Universal Steps (Approach, Identify, Immobilize, Disable, Access), Rom Duckworth examines three situations: no confirmed release, a leak without fire, and fire. Cases connect hydrogen’s distinctive hazards with practical decisions about rescue, ignition control, detection, tank exposure, and withdrawal. Participants will examine detector limitations, nearly invisible flames, high-pressure venting, cryogenic releases, and the additional electrical hazards of fuel cell vehicles. The session also identifies what crews should preplan with fleet operators and hydrogen suppliers before the call.

Every day in your community, vehicles travel the road carrying large numbers of potential victims; some children, some elderly, some with special medical issues, and all your responsibility. In 2022, about 52,000 police-reported crashes involving school, transit, intercity, and other buses injured some 19,000 people and killed 224, according to FMCSA. This program will help make you ready when it happens in your area. Presenting lessons learned from around the world along with personal experience managing school bus and inter-city tour bus incidents Rom Duckworth lays out the 3 key steps to managing major (and minor) motor coach collisions in your response area.

The scene looked routine. Until it wasn't. Most line-of-duty injuries and operational failures don't come from a lack of skill, they come from a failure to recognize what's changing around us. We miss the structural cue that precedes collapse. We don't notice the behavioral shift before a patient becomes violent. We commit to an action without accounting for what just shifted on the fireground or in traffic. Poor situational awareness doesn't just threaten safety; it degrades decision-making, slows operations, and compounds risk for everyone on scene.

This session won't tell you to "stay alert." It will give you a working framework (six steps of situational awareness and action) that you can apply in real time when distraction, task saturation, and urgency are all working against you. We'll use real-life case studies and in-class exercises to show how experienced responders lose the picture, how crew resource management either supports or undermines awareness, and what actually changes performance under operational pressure.

You'll leave with practical strategies to recognize developing threats, prevent unsafe actions before they happen, and operate more effectively when everything around you is dynamic and dangerous. This isn't theory. It's the difference between seeing it coming and being surprised by what kills you.

Choices made in the first few moments set the path for any major incident. Because any emergency responder might find themselves first on the scene of a mass casualty, all responders must be ready to stay mission-focused from initial chaos through the evolving complexity of the incident. Rom Duckworth presents current research and best practices in mass casualty management along with lessons learned from his own responses to large-scale incidents, including Hurricane Andrew and 9/11. Attendees will learn to manage patients, problems, and partners in a dynamic program covering core concepts in triage, treatment, transportation, and more, with a focus on preparing every responder with practical skills to have ready when their time comes.