From the Orland Park Patch: Raymond Kay, who now serves as acting chief in the Orland Fire Protection District, taught at the Illinois Fire Service Institute as a lieutenant on his days off from the fire service. In 1998, a new class called Emergency Response and Terrorism Basic Concepts was introduced, but it wasn’t well received.

The class was only the beginning of Kay’s involvement with training for new terrorism threats. Drawing from his background in hazardous materials, Kay was placed in charge of building a unique team designed to deal with a potentially catastrophic scenario: a hostage situation in which the captors have chemical bombs at their disposal.

In time, the 70 attendees and 17 instructors were participating together in exercises wearing fully encapsulated Level A hazmat suits and carrying weaponry.

While a primary goal was to build a team adept at handling armed adversaries and also able to mitigate a chemical threat, not everyone was trained to use weapons in such scenarios.