By Erik Hogstrom
Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA)
Copyright 2006 Woodward Communications, Inc.
PEOSTA, Iowa — Members of Iowa’s volunteer Disaster Medical Assistance Teams fit metal poles into joints to erect seven large tents.
These were linked with corridors, then team members laid floors and wrapped walls, turning the complex into something more than a collection of tents.
“It’s a 50-bed hospital — which is larger than three-fourths of the hospitals in the state of Iowa,” said Dr. Doug Butzier, medical director of the Dubuque Disaster Medical Assistance Team and an emergency medicine physician at Mercy Medical Center-Dubuque.
The Iowa Department of Public Health held an exercise with the state’s new mobile health care facility Friday in Peosta.
Based in Des Moines, the fully enclosed mobile unit could be used for hospital surge capacity, a special-needs shelter, an evacuee processing center, an immunization clinic site or a triage/first aid clinic in the event of a disaster.
“This gives us the basic level of preparedness we need,” said Nicole Peckumn, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Health.
About 115 people from a variety of agencies and organizations practiced erecting the mobile unit during a steady rain in the parking lot of Ney Trucking, 15395 Old Highway Road.
“We could get this ready to receive patients in four to five hours,” Peckumn said.
Tilly Giellis, deputy DMAT leader and Mercy’s emergency medical services coordinator, welcomed the rainy conditions — for the sake of the exercise.
“It is not going to be nice weather some of the times. We would have to put this up,” she said.
Based throughout the state, including Dubuque, DMAT members supplement local medical and public health personnel at or near disaster sites during the first 24 to 72 hours of an incident.
Each team consists of physicians, emergency and intensive care nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, paramedics and respiratory and pharmacy technicians.
Kept in boxes when not in use, the mobile unit comprises five 19-foot by 35-foot tents and two 20-foot octagonal tents.
“If it is used in a health-care situation, it can house no more than 50. If it is used as a shelter, it could house 60 very easily,” said Clark Christensen, the logistics and DMAT officer with the Center for Disaster Operations and Response of the Iowa Department of Public Health.
Most federal response teams use the same type of facility, and Peckumn said linking the state unit to federal units could triple the facility’s capacity.
Funded through federal grants, the mobile unit arrived in Iowa in June.
It has not been deployed in a disaster, although public health officials held it in reserve during the recent norovirus outbreak that sickened more than 50 people in Ames.
“It’s a really great asset for the state,” Peckumn said.