Yesterday we had a huge fire at a manufacturing plant. Our SOG (Special Operations Group) was called in to provide decon of patients and rescue personnel. Our EMS division was called to transport many patients to the area hospitals.
It was our big chance to shine! We have been training and practicing, and practicing and training for 3 years and finally a full scale activation of our SOG.
I'm not going to get into too many details of the disaster, but there is a couple things I wanted to express. First off, we worked exactly as we had trained. Training pays off BIG TIME in the long run. Even members that had never been to any HazMat scene before and only had book work to rely on operated to their specification perfectly. There was no arguing among the team members or with other other departments and there was no ego trips. We were there for the support of the local community under the authorization on the county EMA, and it went beautifully.
It was long though. The activation lasted about 10 hours and during that time we decontaminated many people and even 1 dog. I got to see the EPA in action and those guys are pretty impressive too.
One more note. Our company president was there, and when he first arrived I figured he would go on over to the administration area and chat it up with the other people way out of my pay grade, but then he asked "Where do you need me?" To tell you the truth it blew my doors. He suited up and worked a decon pool for over 5 hours with other crew members. Say what you want about big wigs, but some of them put their money where their mouth is. This guy earned MAJOR respect points with the team. They were talking about it for hours after he had to leave and head back to the office. To tell the truth, I was talking about it too. We all knew he was trained to the operations level, but it was damn impressive to see him voluntarily suit up and join the other guys in the trenches.
For our first major call out I could not have been happier.
3 comments:
cptnmedic, I appreciate your comment but due to the fact that I got into a rather large amount of trouble for this blog a couple years ago I have to closely monitor all comments that might be able to tie this board to the company I work for in any way. Please, if you have time repost your comment to be a little less "descriptive".
In responce to motives: Sure we all know that any company president likes press, but in his defense never once did he do anything but the job he was assigned to do. Now what happened before or after the activation is any ones guess, but he was an line operator through and through during our activation.
Z
Thanks buddy, I look foward to our next training session, you guys always do a great job.
Z
There was some mild aggravation as there is with any large scale training excersize, however as a whole it was very well recieved. Any training is good training, and opinions will always vary when you have so many talented and well trained people in the same place. As long as we continue to try to learn from eachother we will always progress forward.
Z
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