Huge explosion Scenario

[Just Plain Ruff]

It's 11am and you are sitting around the station waiting for your first call. I know, not a busy service. You hear a huge explosion that rattles even your firestation/EMS station walls. Immediately your television goes out as well as the computer turns off.

You exit the building to see what is going on and you see what appears to be a pillar like cloud coming from approximatly 5 miles away.

All your services for your city are housed in the same building. Your resources are as follows

2 ambulances

2 pumpers

1 ladder truck

1 rescue truck

and 1 tanker truck

The police resources are 2-3 officers on per shift and your county officers and state patrol comprise 1-4 additional personnel per shift.

You can see large amounts of smoke from where the pillar of smoke was.

You notice that there is only one vehicle moving along the road your station is on. This road is the main drag of your town and it normally has many vehicles moving along at any time. The vehicle moving along is a 1960's era car.

What do you do now?

You have not been toned out and there are people standing around outside their places of business looking towards your station as they expect for you all to know what to do.

Go with this.

[Just Plain Ruff]

What no one wants to tackle this one?????

[joesph]

OK first contact your dispatch by radio and notify them of the general location of the explosion. 2nd assuming you are subsequently the senior person on duty and you are dispatched to the incident request a call up of all off duty personnel to stage at your station. 3rd send the rescue truck to the incident with a all risk approach until the scene is sized up to potential hazards.stage all other resources 500 yrds away upwind until scene safety can be determined.

Whats next.

[Just Plain Ruff]

OK first contact your dispatch by radio and notify them of the general location of the explosion. 2nd assuming you are subsequently the senior person on duty and you are dispatched to the incident request a call up of all off duty personnel to stage at your station. 3rd send the rescue truck to the incident with a all risk approach until the scene is sized up to potential hazards.stage all other resources 500 yrds away upwind until scene safety can be determined.

Whats next.

You attempt to contact dispatch but your radios do not seem to work. There are people standing around outside trying to get their Cell phones to work.

You jump in your shiny red fire trucks and they don't start.

[joesph]

sounds like a power plant explosion knocked out all electronically controlled devices. Hope your shoes are comfy.

[HERBIE1]

Sounds like an EM pulse from a nuclear explosion. All electrical devices will be inoperable.

Break out the radiation detectors, don all the protective gear you have.

Any back up communications available- telegraph, etc?

Activate air raid siren if applicable.

Immediately get people evacuated to safe location- bomb shelters, sealed rooms, underground areas.

Scene is NOT safe.

[joesph]

nuclear explosion?

[Just Plain Ruff]

nuclear explosion?

Yes Nuclear

EMP destroyed all electronic circuitry

[paraloco]

It's 11am and you are sitting around the station waiting for your first call. I know, not a busy service. You hear a huge explosion that rattles even your firestation/EMS station walls. Immediately your television goes out as well as the computer turns off.

You exit the building to see what is going on and you see what appears to be a pillar like cloud coming from approximatly 5 miles away.

All your services for your city are housed in the same building. Your resources are as follows

2 ambulances

2 pumpers

1 ladder truck

1 rescue truck

and 1 tanker truck

The police resources are 2-3 officers on per shift and your county officers and state patrol comprise 1-4 additional personnel per shift.

You can see large amounts of smoke from where the pillar of smoke was.

You notice that there is only one vehicle moving along the road your station is on. This road is the main drag of your town and it normally has many vehicles moving along at any time. The vehicle moving along is a 1960's era car.

What do you do now?

You have not been toned out and there are people standing around outside their places of business looking towards your station as they expect for you all to know what to do.

Go with this.

It was a small nuclear detonation, which produced an electromagnetic pulse. This killed anything with solid state electronics, which is dang near everything now. The 60's era cars did not have electronic ignition. That came in the mid 70's. Time to think START triage on a large scale. You unfortunately are too close to the problem to do much. Everyone who can needs to bug out and not look back, in an upwind direction. This is a job for Homeland Security and FEMA. Tell everyone who will listen as you are LEAVING by horse, dogsled, sedan chair, etc. Elbows and @ssholes headed for the horizon

[Richard B the EMT]

If possibly 5 miles away, it probably would have also shattered the windows in the station/house.

You have power for the room lights? A smoke cloud was mentioned. Does it look anything like a mushroom, the supposed classic indicator of an atomic or thermonuclear explosion? Did anyone report a blindingly bright flash, lasting for anywhere from a split second to 10 seconds, before the explosion concussion reached the emergency building? Despite the weather report, especially if this happens in midsummer in Florida, has it suddenly started to snow?

It probably was an atomic or Nuke detonation, with the EMP as already described.

I suspect any beeper sized radiation detectors, and possibly the 1950s yellow box radiation detectors from the movies (some still available in the catalogs I am getting <no, not the Galls catalog!>), will also have shorted out from the EMP.

Wasn't there a TV show 2 years ago, using this as the premere episode, and the series taking the idea of "after the bomb goes off in our backyard, what're we gonna do?"