Preparing for the worst

Local emergency personnel had a busy day Saturday performing several training drills to give first responders the opportunity to practice for a real-life catastrophe.

The day began at 9:30 a.m. with a simulated mass casualty situation at Moscow High School with a zombie/UFO crash theme. About 40 MHS and University of Idaho students volunteered to be "victims."

Moscow police officers entered the high school first, performing a security sweep and taking down the "bad guys," who were armed with Nerf guns. After the building was secured, volunteer firefighters and paramedics attended to the victims. EMTs labeled victims, using a triage assessment system, based on the extent of their injuries.

Rick Andersen, a paramedic with the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department, said the triage system is necessary to keep hospitals and paramedics from being overloaded in a mass casualty situation.

"Triage is all about getting the critical patients the care they need first, dealing with other patients later," Andersen said.

About 30 patients were transported to a simulated emergency room at Gritman Medical Center during the 1 1/2 hour drill.

Moscow Volunteer Fire Department EMS Division Chief Dave Reynolds said he thought the drill was successful and provided good training for emergency personnel. Participating agencies included the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department, Moscow Police Department, Latah County Search and Rescue and the Troy, Potlatch, Deary, Genesee and Kendrick-Juliaetta ambulance companies.

The mass casualty drill's theme, zombie/UFO crash, received harsh criticism when it was first announced months ago, but Reynolds said he chose the theme for a specific reason.

"We wanted to have fun with it Some of the stuff we see in these events in the real world is very sad. You've seen the events in the news in the past couple months and the past couple years," he said. "There's some very tragic events out there. We just didn't want to drag everybody through that tragedy again, so we lightened it up."

UI students Cody Earl and Courtney Rupert volunteered as victims for the drill and said it made them feel safer, knowing how first responders will react in a mass casualty situation.

"It was pretty fun," Earl said. "It was kind of cool to see what they do in serious situations like that and be on the inside of something like that."

"It's good to see that they know what they're doing and they'll be there," Rupert said.

Andersen said he felt better prepared for mass casualty situation after participating in Saturday's drill.

"We've been training for this for years and to actually come out to a simulated event makes it a lot more real," he said. "And we got a lot of good feedback from everybody working here. We worked well with other agencies. I feel that we're much better prepared for a real event, God forbid it should ever happen."

Later Saturday afternoon, volunteer firefighters teamed up with Latah County Search and Rescue, the American Red Cross, the Latah County Sheriff's Mounted Posse, MedStar and Life Flight to perform a first-ever rough terrain evacuation drill at Robinson Park.

After practicing the rescue scenario with a mannequin first, volunteer firefighter Andrew Crossler volunteered to act as the stranded and wounded victim. Crossler was strapped into a rescue basket, also known as a litter, at the bottom of a hill while two other firefighters clipped their harnesses to the basket.

At the top of the hill, firefighters set up a two-rope haul system anchored to two trees. The ropes were then wrapped around the saddle horns of mounted posse horses, Deets and Dakota. The horses, ridden by Orrin Riebold and Dan Budvarson, pulled the weight of the basket and its carriers up the hill in just under seven minutes.

Crossler was then lifted into a rescue trailer hooked to the back of an ATV and transported to a helicopter.

Geoff Ewan, Moscow EMT and firefighter, said the rough-terrain evacuation exercise provided the first responders with a real-world application of their training.

"It keeps everybody on their toes and it's good to do this instead of doing it inside the flat engine bay all the time," Ewan said. "We haven't really done this before, so if we ever have to do this in the future, we'll have a better idea what we're going to encounter."

Reynolds called the inaugural evacuation drill an "unbelievable success."

"It worked incredibly good," he said. "It was fast. It was easy. The horses took a lot of work out of the process. They worked really well together. The whole thing went great."

Latah County Search and Rescue also performed a man-tracking exercise Saturday morning at Robinson Park as a precursor to the rough-terrain evacuation drill.

Both drills involved about 200 total volunteers, some of whom began at 6 a.m. Saturday and worked until after 4 p.m., before finishing the day with dinner and a debriefing at Fire Station 2. The drills took about six months to plan.

Reynolds said because everyone participating was a volunteer, the drills didn't cost any extra money to taxpayers.

Meredith Metsker can be reached at (208) 883-4628 or mmetsker@dnews.com. Follow her on Twitter at: @MeredithMetsker