How prepared is your town?

[Nate]

thermonuclear Armageddon.

Yeah...I'm going to need a pay raise. :shock:

[AZCEP]

Yeah...I'm going to need a pay raise. :shock:

Look at the pretty colors :roll:

[Nate]

:shock: Wow...how come I just lost all of my hair?

[Richard B the EMT]

Accidental duplication, see my next posting, with corrected spelling.

[Richard B the EMT]

A little over a decade ago, we had the "Golden Venture" incident, where about 300+ would be illegal Fugian Chinese immigrants landed in the Fort Tilden/Roxbury area of the Rockaway Peninsula section of Queens County, NY, from a small freighter ship (the "Golden Venture"), hauling the Chinese AS the cargo, deliberately ran aground. We had multiple "alphabet soup" agency responses, at city, state, and federal levels, and ambulances from all over the tri-state area and beyond (NY, NJ, Connecticut, Pennsylvania). We lost 6 of the Chinese to drowning, and one to a cardiac arrest, and surprisingly, we only had one injured rescuer (a paramedic twisted her ankle on the beachfront sand).

The assorted rescuers treated them for hypothermia, and guarded them until the Immigrations and Naturalizations Service (INS) took them into custody. We seemed to have some kind of real cooperative effort of all agencies in the incident command structure.

If a common mistake of moving all the victims to the nearest hospital is followed, we've simply moved the MCI from one location to another.

At the bombing of the World Trade Center (the first time), EMS told all the hospitals within the NYC area that they would have to remain open, and categorical diversions would not be accepted, even the hospitals furthest from the incident. That way, no one hospital would be overwhelmed by sudden patient influx, and all could share some of the workload generated.

I can presume in the areas where it's over an hour travel time to a "next nearest hospital," that there would be some kind of multi-agency Mutual Aid agreements made, with some idea of "Who's in Charge" in place prior to the incident.

Can you say "Pre-Plan"? Multiple Incident Command areas only work if they are coordinated, like a north, south, east, and West Command under an uber-command that is fully in charge. If each command ends up claiming to be the boss, each command potentially can undermine another command, and put personnel at risk.

I'll use a fantasy event of a train derailment, causing a multi-block big fire fueled by torn up Gasoline tank cars, some of which have already gone BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expansion Vapor Explosion). North Command authorizes a fire break to be created by use of explosives, but east command orders the troops in with hand lines, and neither knows the other's agenda. How many firefighters just got needlessly killed?

There needs to be some kind of coordination in the responses, too. After the 9-11 Attack, so many EMS agencies responded to the WTC, and a lot of them left their home communities unprotected. I theorize they felt that their predesignated mutual aid departments would cover their home territories.

The problem with that was, If company A thinks company B is going to cover their area as they respond to company C's area, even as company B is also responding into company C's area, who is left to cover both company A and B's area?

New York State DoH came up with a general plan to answer that.

No EMS agency can "self assign" themselves to another EMS agency's "turf," they have to be "invited." Then, they can only leave their own "turf" after making sure that they have minimal staffing to cover the home turf. If your agency has one ambulance, you cannot strip your community of it, but if you have 2, both have to be staffed before one of them can go help the next town.

In the event of something big, like that scenario I previously mentioned, the State Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is the only agency that can call up for additional units, with the proviso that the department called still can maintain their own area's coverage prior to responding to the staging area.

Violation of these rules will result in big-time financial fines, both for the department, and the individual crewpersons.

Note: I am not saying this is the best way to do things, but it is the way I am told they are going to be for the time being, until a better system can be "thunk up."

[yingyang]

O.K., what everyone is saying has good points and bad points, and yes, we can not prepare for everything, the most we can do is cross our fingers and hope we planned for the next event. Besides, fire and police resources what other groups do you or your EMS providers work with on drills? Does anyone work with red cross or local VFW or elks? How about C.E.R.T.(community emergency response team), there is a lot of training matters out there Thu the DHS and PEMA to start you own group and train them to back you up....I live in a Private gated community with over 90 miles of roadway, we have a fire/rescue company and also two BLS units, we also have public safety officers on patrol, but still find a lot of use for the CERT TEAMS, like someone said, if all of our resources respond to a major event, then who is left to take care of our community while we are away.....don't say that CERT are not well train, because you are the ones doing the training so train them right in the first place and then you'll know what you have.........

[Medic2588]

I recently ran an evacuation table top drill for my hospital. The scenario was a bomb threat to the hospital. Participating in the drill we included: Our hospital and the 2 hospitals with mutual aid agreements and the VA Hospital we have an NDMS agreement with, the local PD, FD, EMS, ALS, OEM, Public Works, County OEM, County Dept of Health, Medical Reserve Corps, C.E.R.T. team, State Police Bomb Team, neighboring county's sheriffs for bomb dogs, and county jail (where we have planned to set up an alternate care site). Yingyang is right, you NEED to include everyone when you drill. Regardless of how much money you get in grants or fundings for new equipment, it will never mean anything if you don't have the right players in place.

Devin

[csr]

As someone who worked as a paid firefighter/EMT for this city I can say based on first hand knowledge that we are in no way prepared fo an MCI or anything else beyond the average single dwelling house fire or 2 vehicle motor vehicle crash.

[Richard B the EMT]

CSR, are you saying your agency could not handle a 60 patient tour bus crash, even with some kind of mutual aid with neighboring EMS agencies?

Either I am reading something completely incorrect into your posting (which I hope is the case), or something ain't right with your agency (which I completely hope is not the case).

[asy]

we just had an mci last week that went extremely well

... :roll:

I can quite certainly say that some areas here have become specialized in that. As a whole, Magen David Adom (the Israeli national EMS- there's no different EMS for each town) is in my opinion as prepared as it can be, drill-wise and actual-cases-wise. It's ability to cooperate with the military, the police, the fire departments and the civilian organizations of volunteers has proven to be remarkable. The best feature is that almost every civilian knows just how to act in those cases (especially when it comes to terror attacks and bombings), and has some degree of awareness.

STILL, my town is NOT ready and I don't believe anyone can be "ready".

here, what makes the difference between being paranoid and being ready for armageddon is how much time there is until the next elections.