First responders and healthcare professionals hone skills during emergency drill

On the morning of Wednesday, January 22nd, Bainbridge Public Safety, Decatur-Grady 911, Memorial Hospital, Decatur County Fire & Rescue, the Department of Public Health, and South Georgia EMS joined efforts to conduct a mock Emergency Response Disaster Drill.
 
At 10:00am, the drill was toned out by Decatur-Grady 911 as a railcar derailment and chlorine spill at the Bainbridge Town Center strip mall (where the K-Mart was once located). Emergency responders arrived on scene shortly thereafter.
 
Approximately fifteen students from the Health Care program at Bainbridge High School volunteered to serve as the victims of the accident. The students were realistically moulaged to appear to be suffering from a variety of head, arm, and leg injuries.
 

 

 

 
Officers, firefighters, and EMS technicians immediately contained the accident scene and assessed the severity of the victim’s injuries. As the first responders arrived on scene, each victim was tagged and given a paper that told of the severity of their wounds, and several were deemed as “casualties.”
 
One by one, each survivor was taken to the decontamination area and then transported to the Memorial Hospital Emergency Room where medical staff were ready and waiting to treat the Code Yellow patients upon arrival. Patients were treated for a variety of ailments including chemical burns, respiratory distress, cuts, bruises, fractures, and heart failure, and the casualties were taken to the hospital morgue.
 

 
The disaster drill was intended to simulate a mass casualty event, and provided mandatory training for Memorial Hospital staff, Bainbridge Public Safety officers, Decatur County Fire & Rescue firefighters, and South Georgia EMS technicians.

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