CAL FIRE Fire Captain Practice Test

Identify the hazard. In Haz-Mat responses, quickly figuring out what chemical or material you’re dealing with, its properties, container, and potential effects drives every safety decision. Knowing the substance informs what PPE to wear, how to isolate or evacuate, which containment or decontamination methods to use, and which specialized teams to bring in. The other items describe roles or general procedures at an incident, but they aren’t the hazard-identification step emphasized by the Haz-Mat acronym.