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Local fire and emergency medical personnel attend to a volunteer playing a rescued victim during a disaster preparedness drill Saturday at Henry County Public Safety. The disaster involved a fire and multiple simulated injuries. (Contributed photos/Henry County Public Safety) |
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Monday, January 12, 2009
The danger wasn’t real during Saturday’s disaster exercise at Henry County Public Safety, but the drama was.
Seventy-five volunteers from the county’s eight fire departments and five rescue squads took part in the drill, which was designed to evaluate emergency responders’ skills during a large-scale emergency. As part of the disaster scenario, public safety officials created a propane-based fire in their burn building, which played the role of a five-story apartment complex.
As fire raged from the windows, volunteers playing victims yelled helplessly from the roof and windows to those below. Others playing victims on the ground sought the attention of the first-arriving ambulances, seeking medical assistance for their life-threatening burns and injuries.
Dale Wagoner, director of public safety for Henry County, said the volunteers playing the victims arrived at 8 Saturday morning to get into character. Each was told what his or her injuries would be, and they were made up to look hurt and instructed to play their parts, “just like in Hollywood,” Wagoner said.
Several of those volunteers were high school students who are enrolled in firefighting classes through their schools. Others were volunteers who have not yet completed EMT and firefighting training.
The firefighters and rescue personnel who took part in the drill were expected to treat everything as if it were a real disaster, Wagoner said.
“They were required to put out the fire, rescue the victims” and triage them, or evaluate the severity of their injuries and determine the best course of treatment, he said. Rather than transport the “victims” to the hospital, rescue workers took them to a holding area, Wagoner said.
“An exercise like this allows us to evaluate the ability of emergency responders to handle large-scale events,” said Suzie Helbert, EMS coordinator for Henry County Public Safety and exercise co-coordinator. According to Helbert, Public Safety will take the information learned from the exercise and use it as a baseline for future training, policies and procedures.
Wagoner’s initial evaluation of the drill was reassuring, he said in a news release.
“The volunteers are commended for their excellent job managing this massive incident. It was apparent that the volunteers take their role as an emergency responders seriously and they want to do what is best for the community,” Wagoner said.
Good interagency cooperation, sound decision-making by volunteer leaders and great knowledge of basic principles of firefighting and emergency medical services were some of the initial strengths identified from the two-hour exercise by Wagoner. He also noted that there is opportunity for improvement in overall scene management, rescuing from heights and efficiently transporting patients.
Wagoner said that even when weaknesses are identified, drills such as this one still are a success.
“It’s always a success because even if there’s weaknesses, it tells us where we need to put our focus” and what needs to be worked on, he said.
The last time Henry County did a full-scale mock disaster drill was about four years ago, Wagoner said. More recent drills have been designed around specific spaces, such as Martinsville Speedway. |
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