Photo by Bill Petzold • Cass City High School seniors Sammy Sieradzki, left, and Billy Haas, second from right, are assisted by members of the Elkland Township Fire Department during Wednesday’s weapons of mass destruction training exercise in Cass City.
By Bill Petzold
Editor
CASS CITY — It wasn’t a perfect practice, but practice makes perfect.
Hills and Dales General Hospital staff members hope Wednesday morning’s weapons of mass destruction drill have shown them how they can hone the hospital’s readiness in the event of a real attack. The drill was performed in conjunction with the Cass City Police Department, Mobile Medical Response ambulance service and Tuscola County Emergency Management.
Cass City High School seniors Jake Hacker, Nick Middaugh, Billy Haas and Sammy Sieradzki portrayed the victims of a chlorine gas attack, coughing and choking as they lay on the floor and against the wall of the Cass City community swimming pool.
“It was a really good opportunity for us as students to give back to our community and help them get used to (dealing with a WMD scenario) and prepare for if there really is an emergency, so they’ll know what they’re doing,” Hacker said while resting in a bed at Hills and Dales at the end of the exercise. In the scenario he had suffered chemical burns to his hands, and in the time between 9:02 a.m. (when the hospital received notice of a chlorine gas attack at the pool) and 9:50 when the all-clear was sounded, Hacker had been rushed to the hospital, decontaminated, been assessed and received treatment for his injuries.
“They did a really good job.”
Shortly after 9 a.m. a yellow rental truck with “Death to America” emblazoned on the side backed up to the pool house of Cass City’s Helen Stevens Memorial Pool. Cass City Police chief Craig Haynes was the first on the scene, and contacted the Elkland Township Police Department. With the breathing apparatus that firefighters carry, they are better equipped to deal with a gas attack.
As the firefighters spoke with MMR personnel, student actors Anna Bagnall and Adrien Hartsell arrived on the scene to add a bit of drama. Bagnall screamed at the officers to hurry and help her son, and the scenario took on an added sense of realism.
“I just tried to think about what it would be like to be in that situation with my child being in pain, and I tried to react properly so if that somebody is in that real situation they’ll get the right kind of help and it will be sufficient for their needs,” Bagnall said. “It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to be pretending’ — it was real; I’m exhausted now. You put so much into trying to get this help, and they did an incredible job.”
The students studied the effects of chlorine gas to aid their performance. Chlorine gas was used during World War I as a choking agent and in the short term causes wheezing, coughing and watery eyes.
“We were told kind of what people would be going through, so we had a general idea of what would be happening to each of the people,” Bagnall said, “and so I think when they were acting that helped them a lot.”
Hills and Dales pharmacist Craig Bellew also serves as Patient Safety Officer and heads up the hospital’s Safety Team, which consists of Dale Fritz, Joe Nicholl, Mike Fields, Kathy Dropeski, Ron Pawloski, Peggy Davidson, Jennifer TerBush, Samone Ivan, Paula Pobanz, Faith Fahrner and Gayle Beagle.
Bellew led a debriefing meeting after the exercise where participants compared notes. Personnel made suggestions about how the process of preparing to receive emergency WMD victims could be improved. On the whole, Bellew said, the process worked very well.
“We had very positive results today,” Bellew said. “We have a few things to tweak, no doubt, but that’s what the turning-out process if for: to learn. I don’t think there was any true negative. Everything we did was very positive.
“I was impressed with the (decontamination) tent setup; that thing was up in 10 minutes. I couldn’t believe it. By the time I got up there, it was already up. … The four guys that have been doing it here … have been here and they’ve done it, and they haven’t had it up since last year. They’re awesome. We’re very fortunate to have the staff that we have, there are some very dedicated people here.”
At a planning session, organizers hoped to have the decontamination tent set up and ready to receive patients in 20 minutes. The tent is sectioned off by plastic curtains, which provide medical personnel with a place to rinse off any trace of the harmful gas from the incoming victims before they continue to triage.
While first responders attended to victims at the scene though, Hills and Dales staff did much more than set up a tent, setting up an incident command center to help coordinate efforts and even preparing a media center within the hospital so that reporters would receive the correct information about the attack.
“Performing this drill allows us to practice for activation of an incident command center at the hospital, setting up of a decontamination tent to receive victims in the hospital’s ambulance bay, practice donning and doffing appropriate personal protective equipment, testing the hospital’s patient tracking process, as well as practicing collaboration with outside agencies like police and fire departments,” Bellew said. “It is essential for the hospital staff to be prepared for any sort of disaster. We are very thankful to all of the outside agencies and school students who were willing to help us act out this scenario.”