By Gary Massaro
This piece of paper represented a victim that paramedics would have to treat, carry and transport to a hospital.
The victim was laid out flat on the concrete aisle at Comfort Dental Amphitheatre, the entertainment venue formerly known as Fiddler’s Green.
There was a very good reason the victim was flat on the ground. The victim was actually a square piece of laminated paper.
And it was part of a massive training drill for mass casualties last week among area law enforcement – Arapahoe County, Greenwood Village and Cherry Hills Village – as well as South Metro Fire Rescue Authority, Cunningham Fire Rescue and Metcom, the south metropolitan regional dispatcher.
Simply, the drill was designed to get all the agencies involved to get in, treat and transport casualties while coordinating communications across the board.
The communications would go beyond the agencies to include city crews, such as public works, as well as owners of a facility who would want to be informed, said South Metro Lt. Mike DeBoer.
Paramedic John Schroer and Firefighter Jesse Lewis make sure the most serious victims get the first ambulances to hospitals from at a staging area where the injured people were brought and treated. Photos by Gary Massaro.
South Metro participated in 18 drills over six days so all 17 stations and three shifts of firefighters and paramedics could participate, said spokeswoman Becky O’Guin.
This particular drill was for a mass shooting. But the skills practiced could be similar for other emergencies at public or heavily populated areas – a high rise, a park. So the tools taken from it didn’t necessarily mean the agencies were preparing solely for a shooting, but also a lightning strike or a fire.
The drill took a year to plan.
In this case, over three days, the scenario went as follows: The shooter was down and therefore unable to cause any more harm, so rescue crews could go in safely.
On-site security – private and public – had to coordinate their communications while on-site emergency responders were supposed to do initial triage and a count of victims.
Dispatchers were responsible for sifting through incoming communications and send in the right amount of equipment and personnel.
On scene, fire officials had to coordinate a staging area for equipment and crews.
Consider this: If the venue was packed with people, it means that nearby parking would also be packed.
So the logistics commander has to figure out where to park equipment and crews away from the immediate area, and have the trucks park in a way that they could move out of the area and roll to the scene without getting in each other’s way.
Once on site, paramedics would divide into triage, going from victim to victim to assess the degree of severity that each was hurt – determining who was dead, who was likely to die soon, who could be saved with immediate help, who weren’t hurt as badly, who didn’t appear to be hurt but needed to held for observation.
Other paramedics would then be directed to the victims – tagged with red, yellow or green ribbons – red being the mostly severely injured. Those tagged with black ribbons were already dead.
The victims would then be moved to another area, divided into sections for those most hurt and needing quickest transport to area hospitals.
At the area, yet another crew of paramedics would be administering aid to the people brought into each station as well as monitoring which were changing conditions – from yellow to red, for instance, or from red to dead.
Someone else would already have contacted area hospitals, alerting them to be on standby and asking how many people they could treat.
Hospitals, in turn, are supposed to respond by saying how many of each victim – by degree of severity – they could treat, how many red, how many yellow, how many green.
In addition, communications have to be coordinated among neighboring agencies, in case they have to fill in for another emergency.
“Outside of this, we still have a big city to run,” DeBoer said.
After the drill, fire officials would go over what was done right and what could have been done better and then write a report and send it to all agencies involved.
reporter@villagerpublishing.com
