Emergency responders hone their skills during mock accident

Sedalia emergency rooms and clinics were flooded with “victims” Thursday morning as part of a training exercise simulating an ice storm emergency.

The exercise included a re-created bus accident involving several casualties at State Fair Community College, the opening of a special needs shelter at Pettis County Health Center, numerous crash victims transported to Katy Trail Community Health and the establishment of an emergency operations center housing chief elected officials at the Sedalia-Pettis County Emergency Management Agency offices.

Sedalia-Pettis County EMA Director Dave Clippert said the exercise was designed to address issues that could arise in an emergency situation. The drills help officials fix weaknesses or problems in order to improve local disaster response planning.

SFCC nursing students played the roles of victims and family members while Sedalia firefighters recovered casualties from a school bus and loaded them into nearby ambulances, where emergency personnel gave simulated treatment before leaving for Bothwell Regional Health Center’s emergency room.

When the student-victims arrived at Bothwell, hospital staff examined their injuries and conducted triage to prioritize patients who would require immediate medical attention.

Bev Wilkerson, a registered nurse and community management course instructor at SFCC, said her students have participated in similar exercises twice a year for the past five years. The simulated emergencies, which change each year, are aimed at providing out-of-the-classroom experience of disaster management situations.

“The students get a hands-on approach for what their role might be as nurses in these situations,” Wilkerson said. “They mostly learn through observation because they are playing the victims.”

Sedalia Fire Department Deputy Chief Greg Harrell said while the exercise also provides a good training opportunity for firefighters, the focus of the drill was testing the response of EMS personnel and medical care providers.

“The majority of the exercise is designed for the medical people, and we are here to add realism to the accident,” Harrell said.

Although similar exercises take place a couple times each year, Thursday’s drill was the first time in several years in which the emergency operations center was opened, Clippert said. During a disaster situation local officials — including the mayor, three county commissioners, city administrator, police, firefighters and health center employees — would gather at the operations center to monitor the emergency and manage response efforts.

Clippert said with simulations of failing generators, downed cell phone towers and hazardous travel conditions, officials experienced a realistic depiction of how an emergency would affect communication and coordination of responders.

“It’s so hard to exercise that because the first thing everyone does is pull out their cell phones. It would have put a lot of stress on the system,” Clippert said.

The exercise also included a recreation of generator power fluctuating in certain locations, including Sedalia City Hall, which required dispatch operations from the Sedalia Police Department to be transferred to the Pettis County Sheriff’s Office.

Clippert said the exercise gave officials a clearer picture of the emergency systems’ capacity. While he thought some services may be overwhelmed with all the havoc occurring simultaneously, Clippert was satisfied with the performances of emergency responders, medical personnel and the communications system.

“We were pretty pleased with how things went. The reason we do this is so we can identify problems we need to address and begin to fix them,” Clippert said.