04/07/08 

Union County (Iowa) EMS Association

2007 Disaster Drill, Union County, Iowa

The scenario was that there was an explosion in the science lab at the East Union High School. This caused a fire, which was put out by a student with a fire extinguisher. There were 11 critically injured victims, 7 moderately injured, 6 walking wounded, and 4 fatalities, including Mr. Bryson – who tried to get a few days off to recover from that.  

We had about 75 participants in the drill, not including the staff at GRMC who also participated in the exercise as the patients arrived there. Personnel were from Afton Fire Dept., Creston Fire Dept., GRMC Ambulance, Lorimor Rescue. High school students were the victims. The Afton Police Department, UC Sheriff’s Department, including Dispatch, were essential in the drill’s success. The participation was very important and we want to thank the employers who let their employees off work to participate in the drill. 

We found the biggest strengths were staying calm, making a thorough assessment of the scene prior to allowing EMS to access the victims, and following a command chain. Jim Krantz did a good job as Incident Commander, and Gary Hansen did a good job as Medical Officer.  

Problems that would have been encountered had the situation been real, was that the weather kept helicopters from being able to respond, increasing the need for ground ambulances, and the shortage of manpower, especially during the daytime hours and when the crews have multiple jobs to do such as fire response and EMS response. 

Areas we can see the need for improvement include coming up with a better method of radio communications so that one frequency isn’t constantly tied up, being sure that everyone is utilizing the same triage tags, and making sure that personnel know more about the disaster supply trailer, and overall disaster plan.

We really appreciate all the work the school staff and students did to prepare for the drill and make this as real as possible for the rescuers. While the students and staff felt like the alarm to patient care time was prolonged, it needs to be stressed that the EMS personnel can’t enter the scene until fire personnel have assured that it is safe. A situation such as an explosion is going to cause a delay in patient care because of the scene assessment. Everyone did their job in the manner they were trained.

 It was a good learning exercise. We were able to practice the START method of triage – Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment - that the personnel were trained in last year.  We also put the mass casualty response plan we revised last year into a functional exercise for the first time to see how it works, and utilized the disaster trailer for the first time. In each area we had little glitches that we now will set out to find solutions for so they won’t happen next time. The incident command system worked well, but we found that with limited personnel it is somewhat difficult to set up unified command even though it was determined to be a needed component of organization.

 GRMC participated in the drill as did the EU School District and from what I understand, both of those entities also felt the drill was worthwhile and helped them identify areas for improvement in their emergency plans.  

While we can never prepare for every possible incident, the benefit comes from practicing how to organize our resources and mobilize the area ambulances to assist in a disaster. This exercise did help us assess our plan and showed that we can work within the response structure to provide care to as many victims as possible in the shortest time possible. All 24 patients were transported within 1 hour and 15 minutes of arrival of rescuers at the scene. Patients awaiting transport were treated at the scene.

Click on a picture below to see larger image These pictures by Andy Goodell, Creston News Advertiser

Thanks, Andy!

Click on a picture below to see larger image.
These pictures by Jan Beach-Sickels

Click on a picture below to see larger image.
Pictures by Andy Goodell, Creston News Advertiser

Thanks, Andy!

Click on a picture below to view larger image.
Photos by Jasmynne Sloan, Creston News Advertiser, except for last two
 which are by Valerie Allen, CNA.

Thanks, Jasmynne and Valerie!