[Scan-DC] Mass casualty drill THIS THURSDAY! MONITORS DELIGHT!

[dehm]

Someone with a digital scanner please monitor for me as I don't have one =(
I can only imagine that the TGs will be hopping.. I attended one of
these events at NIH ways back. It was quite elaborite.

URL:   http://www.gazette.net/200443/bethesda/news/241034-1.html

--Extracted Text Below--

Mass casualty drill set
by Chris Williams (Staff Writer)
Oct. 20, 2004

Groups will practice procedures Thursday


Emergency sirens will blare along Rockville Pike in Bethesda on
Thursday afternoon as ambulances and rescue workers rush about 100
victims to receive treatment at Suburban Hospital and the National
Institutes of Health.

But this is only a test.

A mass casualty drill will bring together NIH, Suburban, Montgomery
County Emergency Management Services and the National Naval Medical
Center to test their coordination in the event of a major disaster.

"This type of partnership and coordination is definitely a first, the
idea being we're part of the community and we all need to work
together to address these very real threats," said Corey Schultz,
Deputy Public Affairs Officer at the National Naval Medical Center.

The drill will help the top emergency managers evaluate
transportation, communication, hospital capacity and decontamination.
The overall goal is to set an example of civilian, military, local and
federal government coordination.

"We're trying to build a better model that we can export across the
nation," Peppler said.

Thursday's scenario will involve a simulated dirty bomb going off at a
picnic held on the base exposing people to radiation and causing
bodily injuries.

About 30 emergency response units from the Navy medical center,
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services, Walter Reed Army Medical
Center and the National Institutes of Health HAZMAT team will respond
as though it were an actual emergency.

Thursday's drill will allow the agencies to evaluate how well they
work together and how smoothly things would go in the event of an
actual man-made or natural disaster.

The demonstration will be open to military personnel and dependents
only, since it takes place on the medical center grounds.

"We decided to do it inside the base because there's actually going to
be realistic smoke and because of the noises," Navy medical center
public affairs officer Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler said. "We didn't want
to distract traffic on Wisconsin Avenue and Rockville Pike."

People driving on Rockville Pike will see the fire trucks, ambulances
and other emergency vehicles responding to the drill, but traffic will
not be otherwise interrupted, Peppler said. Any explosions or smoke
that may occur as part of the drill will not be visible to the
surrounding areas, he added. Victims will then be transported to
Suburban or to the National Institutes of Health.

The drill will be as realistic as possible, down to the specific
injuries of each individual victim. In order to test the doctors and
other medical technicians who respond, the victims' injuries will be
created using moulage, a realistic mold using Hollywood-style makeup
in order for the medics to identify and treat the wounds before
determining where to transport them for further treatment.

"Moulage is not just there because it's two days before Halloween,
it's there for an academic point of view," Peppler said.

The Navy medical center issued a call for volunteers to participate in
the drill, which will include about 100 civilians and military
personnel who are given instructions on how to act out specific
symptoms.

"They don't just lie there," Peppler said.

The simulation also will include a portable decontamination shelter
set up at the disaster scene and civilian and military HAZMAT teams
dressed in protective equipment to perform the cleanup of the
"contaminated" site.

The three hospitals -- Suburban, Navy and the NIH Clinical Center --
are the main components of the partnership and provide the links
between the civilian, military and federal government emergency
response agencies.

The Navy medical center is equipped to respond to various emergencies,
while Suburban is a community-owned hospital with a Level II trauma
unit equipped to respond to more serious injuries. The NIH Clinical
Center provides a link between the other two hospitals, both
geographically and scientifically, located between Rockville Pike and
Old Georgetown Road and staffed with surgeons and physicians in most
specialties.

"In this partnership, the 'whole' far exceeds what the three
institutions could do independently," NIH Clinical Center director
John I. Gallin said in a written statement.

--EOF--