By T.J. Greaney
Columbia Daily Tribune
COLUMBIA, Mo. — What would happen if a tornado blew through the heart of Columbia? What if its destruction forced the evacuation of Rusk Rehabilitation Center, an area nursing home and an elementary school?
Leaders of area hospitals, health centers and public health agencies plan to find out. On Tuesday, they will hold Mid- Missouri’s first large-scale disaster exercise for hospitals at the Hearnes Center Field House on the University of Missouri campus.
The exercise will simulate the mass chaos, casualties and displaced population of a disaster with none of the corresponding disruptions to day-to-day life. Neither traffic nor normal patient operations at any Columbia hospital will be interrupted.
“We’re going to limit the activity to the Hearnes Center,” said Chris Smith, coordinator of worker safety and emergency preparedness at University Hospital.
Smith said the exercise would be the first opportunity health- care providers have to try out some new equipment. With the help of grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ ASPR Hospital Preparedness Program, area health professionals are now equipped with 1,000 cots as well as pillows, blankets and other necessities for displaced people.
Columbia hospitals also have three mass-casualty trailers fitted with the supplies and equipment needed to perform triage and basic medical care on as many as 100 people. The 24-foot trailers are self- sufficient, equipped with a power system, three radios and a satellite dish to connect emergency staff to essential Internet and phone service.
Smith said the Missouri Hospital Association worked with state hospitals to secure funding for the equipment and strongly urged area health-care providers to hold the exercise, which was planned in June.
To simulate the rush of injured people after a disaster, University of Central Missouri nursing students and others will play the patients’ roles. They’ll act like the disoriented, frantic victims who rush upon first-responders with illnesses ranging from shortness of breath to massive head wounds.
According to the plan, any who can be treated in trailers will receive care there. Otherwise, they’ll simulate ambulance transportation to a local hospital. Information on all patients will be tracked through new, bar-coded wristbands.
“The general public may not realize how much time their local hospitals spend on emergency preparedness, but this is a responsibility all of us take very seriously,” Jim Ross, CEO of University of Missouri Health Care said in a prepared statement.
The exercise also will highlight the continued viability of the 36-year old Hearnes Center as a place to handle mass evacuees. Smith said the center is equipped with a backup diesel generator that can ensure continuous lighting and power the arena elevators if there is a power outage. It also has “step-down” transformers that can power a limited number of 110-volt outlets.
“The Hearnes Center has been on our list” of sites “for some time,” Smith said. “It’s close to the hospitals, it has space for a lot of cots and” space “to care for a lot of people efficiently under one roof.”