HAZMAT Certifier, Week 1

Since Monday I've been in HAZMAT Certifier class. It's a two-week course to learn about proper marking, labeling, placarding, and documentation for shipments of hazardous materials. Once I'm done, I'll have a pretty key skill for getting nasty stuff shipped or deployed within federal regulations.

I've been told this is a very marketable skill in private sector, too, but I haven't seen any salary figures online about just how valuable it is. If I ever decide to leave the Army, it'd certainly be something I'd want to know.

It's an easy class, but you really have to pay attention. Being late or otherwise missing anything means you're on your own. The instructors are really great, though. One of my classmates asked one instructor for an example of a Class 1L explosive (a particularly nasty kind of ammunition that can't be co-packaged with any other kind), and he thought for a minute.

"You know that movie Commando?" he starts. "When Rae Dawn Chong stands up and fires a rocket from that four-pack thing?" uh huh. "That's a Class 1L explotive. They don't go ka-boom; they go splat and start fires. The reason they can't be packed with anything else is because they sometimes leak and start fires on their own."

Awesome. Here's a guy who knows his stuff so well and for so long that he can come up with examples from movies that are over 25 years old. Amazing....

So anyway, we had a two-part test on the land portion, split between Wednesday and today. Between the two parts, we had to score at least 75% (I got 96). Next week we cover water and air transportation.