Hazardous-materials technicians from the Fort Bliss Fire Department check Pvt. Christian Jordan, B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, for chemical contamination. Photo by Stephen Baack.
First responders join Soldiers for mass-casualty exercise
Stephen Baack
Monitor Staff
Firefighters, police officers and William Beaumont Army Medical Center personnel here participated in a mass-casualty exercise near the Jeb Stuart South access control point Sept. 24.
The event was part of the post’s weeklong force-protection exercise that tested the responses of units and directorates across post as simulated force-protection levels rose and fell throughout the week.
The exercise presented a scenario in which what was initially reported as a traffic accident between an industrial vehicle and a motor vehicle turned into reports of an explosion involving hazardous materials.
“When our firefighters arrived on scene, they saw signs of a chlorine shipping container,” said Charles J. Butler, Fort Bliss fire chief and incident commander. “At that point, we determined that we had a hazardous-materials accident, and we took appropriate actions.”
Pfc. William Johnston, an explosive ordnance disposal technician with 741st Ordnance Company, controls a robot to check for a secondary explosive device during the post’s Sept. 24 mass-casualty exercise. Photo by Stephen Baack.
While firefighters set up a decontamination staging area, Army medical personnel teamed up with other firefighters on scene and emergency medical technicians to triage and treat more than 30 Soldiers with simulated injuries at the site.
“This is my first mass-casualty exercise, so this definitely was a challenge for me, but good,” said 1st Lt. Audrey Richert, a registered nurse at WBAMC. “I am pending deployment, so this was an excellent exercise for me to participate in.”
Richert triaged patients and helped the other medical personnel with first-line care – from cuts and bruises and severe injuries to psychological trauma.
“I feel it has prepared me because it does give you some of the real-world experience – of course, nothing can really prepare you for the real thing because, as an exercise, these Soldiers probably aren’t going to really act how an actual Soldier who was severely wounded would act,” she said. “In terms of the process and procedure, I felt it was a very good experience for me.”
After many of the patients were taken to WBAMC, hazardous-materials technicians donned their suits and inspected the explosion site with the help of two robots from the 741st Ordnance Company. As the team of three hazmat techs directed the robots to a possible secondary device, the techs used “air-sniffing” devices to search out airborne contamination.
“It’s good that we do have hazmat techs for this area and for the fire department, which could benefit El Paso and the [post] for scenarios like this,” said Jesse Reynolds, firefighter and hazmat tech from Station 4. “Also, any hazmat scene – that’s what we’re trained for.”
Though Reynolds said it was too early to tell how everyone did, as no one had conducted after-action reviews at the time, he said it went well in his opinion. The main challenge, he said, was that the protective suits increase the physical demands of the job.
“They actually do vitals on you before you go in, and if you don’t meet a certain criteria, they won’t even allow you to go into the scene,” Reynolds said. “It’s physically demanding, and it’s always a challenge for the firefighters to go in. … Our guys are in pretty good shape, so we do pretty well.”
1st Lt. Audrey Richert, a registered nurse at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, applies a bandage to the face of Pfc. Chris Wielenga, a communications specialist from 2nd Bn., 3rd FA Regt., 1st BCT, 1st AD, during the post’s Sept. 24 mass-casualty exercise. Photo by Stephen Baack.
Firefighters like Reynolds comprised the bulk of rescue personnel on scene, with 16 total and others in reserve to handle real-world emergencies. In fact, Butler said firefighters handled an actual emergency during the scenario without having to halt the exercise.
“We always measure that against the real-world stuff and the ability for us to still respond to real-world incidents,” Butler said.
“We limited our radio transmissions so we wouldn’t interfere with the real-world emergencies – and we did send a real-world fire truck with four people on it to the medical emergency,” he added.
Butler, who was handling events from another site, said the exercise went well from his perspective – but he said he thinks the simulated victims may have a different opinion. He pointed out that some Soldiers were lying on gravel and waiting for help for quite a while. Butler stressed, however, that because the scenario presented a possible chemical terrorist attack, his firefighters approached cautiously.
“Dead or injured firefighters can’t help anybody,” Butler said. “So, I think our victims probably would have thought that we took too long, but in reality, we were being cautious, we were following the books, following our checklists and doing what we’re supposed to do.”