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by Dennis Ryan
Police and
fire department personnel contemplate responses during the MASCAL drill
November 3, 2000
The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft
billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police
seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to
organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his
equipment to the affected areas.
Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training,
walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was
a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one.
The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was
called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams
were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense
conference room.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the
Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the
scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real
incidents.
To conduct the exercise, emergency personnel hold
radios that are used to rush help to the proper places, while toy trucks
representing rescue equipment are pushed around the exercise table.
A plane crash
is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard of a surprisingly
realistic-looking model Pentagon. This "tabletop" exercise was designed
to help emergency relief personnel better prepare for disasters when
they occur.
Cards are then passed out to the various players
designating the number of casualties and where they should be sent in a
given scenario.
To conduct the exercise, a medic reports to Army nurse
Maj. Lorie Brown a list of 28 casualties so far. Brown then contacts her
superior on the radio, Col. James Geiling, a doctor in the command room
across the hall.
Geiling approves Brown's request for helicopters to
evacuate the wounded. A policeman in the room recommends not moving
bodies and Abbott, playing the role of referee, nods his head in
agreement.
"If you have to move dead bodies to get to live
bodies, that's okay," Abbott says as the situation unfolds .
Geiling remarked on the importance of such exercises.
"The most important thing is who are the players?"
Geiling said. "And what is their modus operandi?"
Brown thought the exercise was excellent preparation
for any potential disasters.
"This is important so that we're better prepared,"
Brown said. "This is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it will never
happen, but this way we're prepared."
An Army medic found the practice realistic.
Police and
fire department personnel contemplate responses during the MASCAL drill.
"You get to see the people that we'll be dealing with
and to think about the scenarios and what you would do," Sgt. Kelly
Brown said. "It's a real good scenario and one that could happen
easily."
A major player in the exercise was the Arlington Fire
Department.
"Our role is fire and rescue," Battalion Chief R.W.
Cornwell said. "We get to see how each other operates and the roles and
responsibilities of each. You have to plan for this. Look at all the air
traffic around here."
Each participant was required to fill out an
evaluation form after the training exercise.
"We go over scenarios that are germane to the
Pentagon," Jake Burrell of the Pentagon Emergency Management Team said.
'You play the way you practice. We want people to go back to their
organizations and look at their S.O.P. (standard operating procedure)
and see how they responded to any of the incidents."
Burrell has coordinated these exercises for four years
and he remarked that his team gets better each year.
Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the
participants that the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident
and that the whole emergency would run for seven to 20 days and might
involve as many as 17 agencies.
"The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest
part," Abbott said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a
disaster. "Families wanting to come to the crash sight for closure."
In this particular crash there would have been 341
victims.
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