By Daniel Witter
Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, California)
Copyright 2006 Appeal-Democrat
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
A dozen victims with mild to severe injuries sat on the ground with large tags hanging around their necks on Fifth Street in Marysville.
Satinder Bains, Jas Nagra and Katy Willis tried to keep comfortable in the cool morning air as the sat on a tarp labeled “minor” in large letters.
All three are students working toward their licensed vocational nursing credentials, but on Wednesday they were pretending to be victims of a mock crop-dusting accident that caused mass casualties. The “accident” was part of a mock exercise for emergency workers to prepare for an event involving a large number of injured people.
“It seems to have worked out well,” said Erik Angle, emergency disaster coordinator for Rideout Memorial Hospital in Marysville. “It shows the hospital works well with others. That’s what we want to do.”
About 30 people were involved in the drill, which included roughly 15 “victims” dressed with fake injuries ranging from chemical burns to broken bones.
The “accident” that caused the event was crop-dusting aircraft that attempted an emergency landing on a roadway. The plane crashed into a bus, causing a fire and a cloud of pesticide to contaminate and injure motorists and bystanders.
The scenario included a fake earthquake in San Francisco, which caused a tidal wave to hit Southern California. So instead of sending patients to Sacramento or elsewhere, already taxed with patients from the other disasters, patients were treated in Marysville.
The hospital conducts these drills twice a year to practice, said Angle. Volunteers like Bains, Nagra, Willis and Sandy Beloat happily posed as the victims, which gave them a taste of what they could encounter as health-care workers.
“I want to watch people do what they do,” said Beloat, who works in Rideout’s admitting department. She suffered a fake broken femur. “It’s interesting to watch them in action.”
“These drills are important,” said Willis, who was categorized with minor wounds. She volunteered to be a victim because she believes it serves the greater good for the community. She brought along her 8-year-old daughter, Paige, who sustained “moderate injuries.”
Bains wanted to participate as a volunteer “just to get experience in what’s happening, so when we’re medical staff,” she’ll know what to expect, she said.
Emergency medical technicians from Bicounty Ambulance spread out into the crowd to assess the wounds and gather vital information.
Later, emergency workers transferred the patients to the driveway at the hospital emergency room, where workers set up a triage center and a decontamination tent. Some staffers wore decontamination suits and directed the victims where to go according to the nature of their injuries.
Dr. Robert Plass, an emergency room physician for Rideout, took a moment to observe the scene before wading into the crowd of patients.
“No situation will ever be the same as what we have here,” he said. Still, the exercises are useful because it gives workers a chance to practice communication and procedures they will use in the event something similar happens, he said.