Mass Casualty Incident

[Coppertop]

We had a very small MCI near here the other day. 8 people in a vehicle went off a pretty steep ravine. It took 4 towns to get enough ambulances to get the folks to an ER. Keep in mind that one town was 25 miles away, we were 55 miles and the other two towns were about 75 miles away. It has always been known in the region that it takes time to do anything because of the distance, but this was a real eye opener.

It is kind of scary to think what would happen if a 30 person bus were to wreck if it took this much regional response to care for 8 folks. Just another reminder that in any disaster, be it natural or man made, we are on our own for a while anyhow.

Thanks
Coppertop

[Baglady]

DAMN! That gives new meaning to taking things for granted. I hope at least some of them survived.

[tc556guy]

Given those kinds of distances, does your region have any airlift capability, and if so what are the protocols and levels of injury that will decide that airlift is used vs ground transport?
We do annual mas cas training events here, usually around scenarios like aircraft going down with multiple casualties/ trauma.
Even with a dozen or so fire companies and their ambulance services available here such an event can be pretty harrowing
We've had small aircraft and cargo aircraft go down in our region; thankfully no commercial passenger aircraft , train wrecks etc

[Coppertop]

We sit in the perfect spot that no Med Flight chopper can get to us without a "hot" fuel stop and they don't like to do it. We sit about 35 miles out of range for a round trip from 3 different places. We can get a fixed wing here, and that is an option if we have lots of casualties but the plane is an hour- hour and 15 out if they are ready to go at the base and in an hour we can have a patient to a critical care unit.

The protocols are- call the ER doc and he will decide if we should call airlift or not. I hope we get that changed so we can call from the scene.

We are in the process of setting up a regional response plan so we can help each other, but until the bosses can come to an agreement----

Thanks
Coppertop