By Jabril Faraj
Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado)
JAMESTOWN, Colo. — Firefighters and other emergency rescue personnel practiced their skills Saturday in a mass casualty exercise in Jamestown. The drill, which had been postponed twice because of snowstorms, was a good chance for various agencies to prepare together for a large-scale emergency.
The exercise &mdash which consisted of almost 30 volunteer “victims” and about 100 firefighters, paramedics and other rescue crews from various Boulder County agencies — started at 8 a.m. All the volunteers got together at the Jamestown firehouse for coffee, some pointers on how to act during the drill and the application of their mock injuries.
Their scenario: A school bus with children aboard that narrowly avoided a collision with another vehicle but flipped on its side.
Claudia Kutscher, a medical officer with the Lefthand Fire Department, said the triage situation for the exercise is meant to challenge the ability of the rescue workers to think on their feet since they don’t know the conditions before they arrive at the scene.
“There’s a lot of other little side things going on ... but the main focus is to get all these kids and other victims out of this bus,” she said.
“We normally don’t have these large disasters here in Boulder County ... but we need to plan. We need to plan who’s coming, how they work together and how they coordinate their efforts.”
Melanie Prey, who was in charge of the victims and was also one herself, said people volunteer for the exercise because it’s fun. But they also do it because it’s important to help make sure the emergency workers know what to do and how to deal with a large-scale situation, if necessary.
“It’s really a fun thing,” she said, “ ‘cause it gives the kids a chance to understand what happens during an emergency and it helps the firefighters in their training on a mass-casualty accident. It’s a win-win for all of us.”
Jamestown Fire Chief Rob Koehler agreed. He said such events are a positive experience for the rescue personnel because it’s something they don’t get to practice often.
“It’s a perfect opportunity for us all to get together and stretch ourselves out,” he said. “It definitely is a benefit for us but also for the people we might have to treat someday.”
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