Saturday, December 30, 2006
MCI Photos
These were taken at the beginning of November during our Mass Casualty Incident (aka MCI) drill. I think I mentioned it before, but I'll give a brief description for those of you who are knew to the blog.Anyone on station can volunteer to be a part of the MCI team. They need volunteers because there are not enough people with a medical background to take care of a large-scale incident. The different teams include Security, Communications, Medical Auxiliary, Walking Blood Bank, and (my personal favorite) the Stretcher Bearers!! As you can tell, I'm a stretcher bearer and one of the only female bearers at that. I'll give you a little play-by-play of the drill.
When the drill is first called, all supervisors are called. Then they page or call their employees that are involved in the drill. There is usually a calling tree for each MCI team. Because I carry a pager and can be tracked down quicker than those without one, I am towards the top of the calling tree. I call the two people I'm responsible for contacting, and if I don't reach them I have to call their people too. There was a lot of hype leading up to the drill, so everyone knew it was coming although it was supposed to be a surprise thing. Unfortunately there was a bit of a confusion and then a real medical emergency so that we were delayed over an hour from the time we were told it was an MCI. So a bunch of us waited on the stairs near the Galley until everything was set to go.
Where our supplies are stored.
When an MCI is underway, the first thing we need to do is to go to the storage closet and pick up equipment we need.
Stretcher Bearers get to wear these really cool vests that my friend Roxanne and I are modeling.
The Communications team sets up a wipe-erase board to keep track of all victims. In this photo, they are consulting with Doctor Harry.
Medical Auxiliary and Stretcher Bearers set up this area in the firehouse as our staging area. There are four sections: green for those with minimal injuries; yellow for those with stable, serious injuries; red for life-threatening injuries; and black for those who are dead or dying.
Before the drill, we had only practiced carrying people on flat back boards, but during the drill victims started coming in in these big orange things. Four of us at a time carry a stretcher and victim. The person in the driver's seat (same position as if you were in a car) is the "driver" and gives direction. Luckily, nobody on my team needed a backseat driver.
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