Standing By: A Multiple Casualty Drill

Last Tuesday, Feb. 28 through Friday, March 2, Murrieta Fire Department staged a in the parking lot across from located on Monroe Avenue.

Capt. Eric Ballard began orchestrating the multi-agency training session about one month prior, lending a sense of dire reality to the scenario: a school bus versus a vehicle (or vice versa), with the corollary, chain reaction involving multiple autos, thus creating a mass casualty incident (MCI). 

"We were able to get Black's Towing to haul three, demolished vehicles over to the parking for each session. We slated two MCI drills on each of the days. The school district drove a bus on over and we positioned the cars so that it would pose a tactical challenge to the firefighters. We conduct drills to practice safety for the victims and for all of the rescue personnel involved, first and foremost, regardless of the staged scenario," said Ballard, who added that practicing with the hydraulic, extrication equipment, such as the Jaws of Life and the scissors, allows the firefighters to devise a method from any number of strategic approaches for quickly removing the twisted metal from around trapped victims.

Murrieta Mesa High School Principal, Mary Walters, gave the green light on allowing drama students to partake, providing school security to accompany the students to and from the site.

"We gave the class a suitcase containing moulage and make-up so the injuries looked real to the rescue personnel conducting assessments," said Ballard. The students were instructed to yell, 'stop' if they saw or felt anything breaching safety or comfort.

"This is one of those great opportunities for us to get directly involved with members of the community because we learn how to improve our services while the public learns how crucial their role is in an emergency situation. It's a lot to ask victims and bystanders to remain calm as the rescue process unfolds. This was a three-dimensional learning experience for everyone present," said Fire Chief Matt Shobert.

"Thirty-eight students participated from each class for a total of 156 actors. It was an honor to assist the fire department while the kids polished their acting skill," said drama teacher, Christopher Ryan. "You can see how they got together and organized the classroom so they could depict their various roles. There was a posted spreadsheet with the dates of the drills and the participants in each. Of course, I was just as thrilled about it as the students were to serve those who serve us," said Ryan. "The MCI drill went off without a hitch, as far as I could tell."

If there's to be a hitch, an MCI describes a situation in which the local, the regional and/or the state emergency medical services becomes overwhelmed by the number and/or the severity of casualties. For example, large passenger vehicle collisions—busses, aircraft, trains, cruise ships. The ever present, unpredictable weather conditions recently creating tornadoes along the U.S., midwestern corridor; tsunamis; earthquakes; school shootings; domestic disputes and property destruction involving many a family member; workplace violence; sports or concert stadium frenzies, ad disaster infinitum. Though Mother Nature can be unpredictably brutal, she isn't always to blame for unspeakable catastrophes.

Hence, it's impossible to rest easy, though knowing an MCI will always involve innumerable responders and a network of agencies, but the arrival of such may be impeded for days. Not only that, hospitals must be alerted as to the scale of the situation to better provide the staffing, the beds and the treatment. The status of a hospital may be on temporary diversion because of an existing depletion of resources. Field responders never transport patients to an arbitrary hospital in an MCI. The crews are precisely advised which facility can manage their patients accordingly.

Once the mayhem seemingly appears out of nowhere, sometimes dissipating within minutes, the disaster leaves a visible path of untold tragedy and unfathomable loss. The magnitude of any disaster casts victims into a state of shock and temporary powerlessness, but only while resilience and hope brim full once again, casting some of them into the role of interim heroes as follows:

Bystanders: John or Jane Q. Public cast into the middle of a fight or flight situation in which they choose to help victims as best as possible BEFORE the professionals arrive. Many Good Samaritans rise to such a challenge without blinking an eye. 

Certified First Responders: May be a part of the local emergency medical services, or they may arrive on their own to help with aspects of evacuation, of securing a portion of the disaster site, of patient care and perhaps transporting the injured from the scene to a designated receiving station. (Murrieta Fire Department hosts Community Emergency Response Training this weekend. For more information, check the fire department website: Murrieta.org/fire and click the CERT icon for the gratis, 2012 training dates). 

There's a whole local, county and state treatise outlining policy and procedure for an MCI, which will be addressed in an article series this week. For now, the result of the  MCI drill sheds a favorable light on the community and the emergency medical system (EMS) participants, including: Black's Towing Service; AMR, Symons, and Mission ambulance services;  officers and dispatchers; emergency room nurses from Inland Valley Medical Center; Both Pechanga Fire Department and Murrieta Fire Department's finest rescue personnel and the future, Murrieta Mesa's Academy Award nominees....to be continued.