Regional emergency responders conduct exercise with Patriot Wing

Published Oct. 23, 2012
By 2nd Lt. Andre J. Bowser
439th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

WESTOVER AIR RESERVE BASE, Mass. -- More than 125 representatives of regional hospitals, municipal and emergency workers, as well as Patriot Wing members converged on the base Oct. 21 for a National Disaster Medical System exercise.

Deploying C-5 aircraft, a helicopter and a parade of ambulances, among other emergency vehicles, exercise participants worked feverishly shuttling mock patients through the various stages of the mass casualty exercise. The scenario involved a natural disaster in a neighboring state with countless injured patients transported by U.S. Air Force medical airlift from the disaster incident to a patient reception team at Westover.

"It takes 25 agencies to do what we're doing here today," Springfield's Emergency Preparedness Director Robert Hassett told the emergency responders from around the region, including officials from Mass. Veterans Affairs, Red Cross, and emergency responders. "Today is all about the process and our focus is on administration and logistics of transporting medical patients safely," he said.

To that end, Hassett said communication between the countless participating agencies was key.

Beverly Hirschhorn, a member of the Medical Reserve Corps, said the opportunity to interact and work with the other agencies was a huge benefit to the exercise.

"We got a sense of how we could fit in a larger response and learned flexibility in terms of taking any role we are requested to do," she said, adding that participants "got a fantastic sense" of the variety of people and agencies necessary to successfully respond to a disaster.

Rows of ambulances from across the region idled outside the Base Hangar, standing by to drive to participating area hospitals where medical staff would practice receiving simulated patients.

Inside the base hangar, dozens of stretchers were lined up in rows with inflatable medical patients resting on the gurneys, their ailments and vital statistics described on paper affixed to the puffed-up bodies.

In all, 48 "patients" were treated and stabilized before being transported to hospitals in all four Western Massachusetts counties -- well within the required six-hour window that's federally mandated.

But Hasset told exercise participants that the exercise was about much more than shuttling medical patients.

"Imagine you're sent hundreds of miles away from home for a medical issue in an emergency," he started, describing the "need to care for the whole person."

In a real-world incident, a mobile kitchen would be deployed and sanitary items would be provided to patients, Hassett said. The Red Cross was on hand providing some creature comforts to participants, including hot soup from a year-old mobile pantry.

Westover is one of two ports of entry in the state for medical patients evacuated from a neighboring state. The other port is Boston's Logan International Airport.

Roger Johnson, director of VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System and the federal coordinating officer for the exercise, said the training event was a chance to brush up on skills and to ensure that agencies were ready should the real thing happen.

"Our responsibilities as local, state and federal participants are to care for all patients needing our assistance as if they were our own neighbors," he said.

Participants in the regional exercise included the Department of Veterans Affairs, the City of Springfield Office of Emergency Preparedness, the Hampden County Medical Reserve Corps, American Red Cross, 11 area hospitals, area emergency medical response units, and units assigned to Westover and the Massachusetts National Guard.