Saturday, May 7, 2011

BWI Airport Emergency Exercise

No mass casualty incident (MCI) exercises in more than six months! Don't want to get rusty. Fortunately, BWI airport had one on May 7th.

After five of these, you can tell what's good and what's not so good. Good: Their moulage (simulated wound) artists were excellent. They worked without rubber prosthetics, and didn't just smudge on some powder. See the photo gallery for examples.

Not so good: I've never seen an MCI exercise with less of a rush to treat and transport. One firefighter broke into a trot, and another said, "Joe*, it's not that big a deal." Um... really? It will be when the real thing happens, so it might be good to practice that.

[* Not his real name.]


In fairness, only a few victims needed to be wheeled off on stretchers; the rest were less serious "walking wounded." However, that's also not good practice for an MCI. By contrast, at Dulles and National, they packed a bus full of people on backboards, put a couple on medevac choppers (nowhere to be seen at BWI), and shipped everyone off ASAP.

Just sayin'... DM prefers to practice worst-case, just in case.


Click on a picture below to go the photo gallery.

BWI Airport Drill 2011

Dulles Airport Drill 2010

National Airport Drill 2010