Sarin is a clear colorless and tasteless liquid that

“Sarin is a clear, colorless, and tasteless liquid that has no odor in its pure form” (CDC
2013). The gas can be released into air and be absorbed into the skin and eyes and it can
contaminate water and food. Sarin is heavier than air so therefore it lingers in lower areas for
greater exposure (CDC, 2013). Sarin is extremely toxic and even one drop can kill a human.
Preventing this attack, special training is necessary at all levels of response. Premature
discovery is one of the crucial components when it comes to deterrence of a chemical attack.
CDC has numerous phases in planning for a chemical attack: “enhance epidemiologic capacity
for detecting and responding to chemical attacks, enhance awareness of chemical terrorism
among emergency medical service personnel, police officers, firefighters, physicians, and nurses,
stockpile chemical antidotes, develop and provide bioassays for detection and diagnosis of
chemical injuries, prepare educational materials to inform the public during and after a chemical
attack” (Argo Group 2000).
As part of CDC’s deterrence program infections and damages resulting from chemical
attacks are being conveyed to the U.S. disease investigation system. State and local health
departments are partnering up fire and ems agencies along with hospital emergency departments,
in demand to guarantee appropriate reporting of inexplicable injuries and illnesses due to
biological and chemical terrorism (Argo Group 2000).
The Incident Command System (ICS) is the standard tool for command, control, and
coordination during emergency situations. It provides a means to organize the efforts of separate

Sarin Gas
companies and organizations to work toward the collective goals of steadying the incident and
protecting life and property. The ICS group is built around five major workings that apply during
any emergency, when planning for a key event, or when working a response to a major disaster
(Kestrel Management, 2013). The five major components are command, operations, planning,
logistics and finance/administration (Kestrel Management, 2013).
The Incident commander would be a unified command system in this scenario, members
of the command system would be the fire department, police department, hospitals and ems
amount others. As the unified command group, each member would oversee actives pertaining to
their duty, organization of all events at the incident and follow the operations objectives. All
would be accountable to create incident urgencies, fix incident purposes and determine the
Incident Command Post (ICP). An established response by the necessary agencies, allow release
of information to the news media by the Public Information Officer (PIO), support and permit
accomplishment of the Incident Action Plan (IAP), ensure safety processes are followed
harmonize with key people and officials (Deal, 2010, p. 1-16).