TOPOFF 3
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Live Strong
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Today was by far one of the most fascinating and fun experiences I have ever had. Likely you have heard on the news of the homeland security drill taking place here in CT and NJ, but also in
Our EMT class went to
As I stand in line waiting to take off my clothes I get my PPK ( Personal Private Kit ) bag open it and the haz-mat guys in the big green suits with o2, hand me my plastic sheet that’s to drape my body. I put on little paper boots and walk into the decontamination trailer. At this point I begin to get cold as its 45 degrees outside and I have nothing but a swim trunks.
Though the cold temperatures outside were nothing compared to the freezing water that was coming out of the shower heads in the decontamination trailer. As I douse my self with water and pretend to lather my self with soap I move through the process while making sure my bathing suit stays around my waist rather then my ankles.
At the end of the trailer, I am given a gown to throw on and I head outside in the cold while soaking wet. I begin shaking uncontrollably as a reaction to the cold. I am rushed to the waiting staff. They place me after 15 minutes of attempting to warm me up, as an urgent pt. The staff at first wanted to pull me from the scenario and put me in a warm room because I was so cold, but I refused and they kept going.
I was then taken to an area which had several chairs lined up. I sat down and a doctor began to fill out my chart that was attached to my wrist. My symptoms were burning, blisters on the right hand and minor breathing difficulty. The make up put on me looked good.
After about 2 hours, the scenario for us was over and we changed back into normal clothes.Overall I would do it again, but hopefully in warmer weather next time.
My Heritage :
3 Comments:
The TOPOFF Full Scale Exercise (T3 FSE) will take place from April 4-8, 2005, and involve more than 10,000 participants representing more than 200 Federal, State, local, tribal, private sector, and international agencies and organizations and volunteer groups. The FSE offers agencies and jurisdictions a way to exercise a coordinated national and international response to a large-scale, multipoint terrorist attack. It allows participants to test plans and skills in a real-time, realistic environment and gain the in-depth knowledge that only experience can provide.
Its to prepare, its to better ready ourselves for a possible attack. Atomic? Lindsay we must take one threat at a time and to DHS, biological seems most possible at this point in time. Its simply precautions and practice for what hopefully never happens.
I can see both sides of this issue.
For one, Matt, at least in your last reply, you remind me of some homeland security advisor in the Bush administration: "you never know where they're going to hit us and we must always be ready and vigiliant and prepared to act." Don't expect people to take that stuff seriously anymore. I know I don't.
The real value of such an activity is to coordinate multiple agencies to respond to any disaster - a tornado, an earthquake, a building collapse, a truck carrying a nerve agent that overturns on I-95, an airplane that experiences a problem midflight and crashes into a mall, or even a terroist attrack.
It may sound simple, but trying to coordinate 500 people from fifteen different agencies is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Just our small scale Trout Brook Valley incident last weekend illustrated the problems with not being adequately prepared for something such as a small plane crash. We had four different agencies searching by foot for the plant - Trumbull ERT (think SWAT), Easton Fire, Easton EMS, and Easton Police. Plus Fairfield and a number of other towns were providing assistance in the way of equipment. Just in terms of looking for the plane by foot, the ERT guys got way ahead of the line, the firefighters and EMTs spread out too much and people could barely contact each other. If someone became hurt or found something the time it would take to respond to a change in the scenario would have been much longer than it should have been. Plus, the paramedic went into the woods, but left his gear in the ambulance, so if they actually found anything, he wouldn't be able to do anything a standard EMT couldn't, because all his gear was a thirty minute hike back to the ambulance. And that was a relatively small scale incident.
An indicent like a rail car or tractor-trailer that is leaking a hazardous substance would require much greater coordination with a great number of agencies, and exervises like the one Matt mentioned above allow everyone to be able to respond in a timely, coordinated manner, and for the greatest number of lives to be saved.
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