Guiding Wildfire Response and Recovery
CSS supports communities following catastrophic wildfires to ensure that items discarded during site cleanup are properly identified, sorted, and sent to an appropriate disposal facility.

Air Monitoring and Household Hazardous Waste Removal Help Devastated Communities During Recovery Efforts

Homes are filled with hundreds of items that are safe in normal conditions but pose significant environmental and health risks after being engulfed in fire. CSS supports communities following catastrophic wildfires to ensure that items discarded during site cleanup are properly identified, sorted, and sent to an appropriate disposal facility. In the aftermath of the recent North Bay/Sonoma, Camp, and Santa Cruz/Carmel wildfires in California, we led teams conducting household hazardous waste (HHW) collections, environmental and asbestos assessments, and multimedia sampling. We also performed on-site air monitoring to protect the health of workers and returning residents, checking for unsafe levels of asbestos, volatile organic compounds, and other airborne hazards that may have been released in the fire. Our staff oversaw safety compliance, prepared daily Incident Command System (ICS) reports, coordinated with senior EPA leaders, and handled requests for special services. We also performed quality assurance reviews of completed removals and assisted with data management.
Additional Projects

Cleaning Up the National Anthrax Attack
Challenge CSS working alongside of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control characterized the extent of building contamination and subsequently determined that the entire 100,000 foot building and contents would need to be decontaminated. A novel method needed to be developed and implemented for cleaning the massive number of mail pouches, packages and artifacts destined…

ITC Tank Farm Fire Emergency Response
In response to a dangerous fire EPA ordered CSS’ senior field operations specialists to a facility near Houston where massive tanks stored highly flammable liquids to help manage emergency response activities.

Radiation Decontamination Application for EPA
CSS served as the bridge between computer developers and the scientific community during the creation of a Radiation Decontamination application.

Get in touch
Contact us to learn more about our projects, capabilities, solutions, and service offerings.