Gloucester Fire Department In Action
Drill tests city's rescue teams
(Courtesy of Gloucester Daily Times)
By ANNIE TAYLOR
Times staff
Laying on the cold, cement floor of the Gloucester High School
auto body shop, students Trina Buscaino and Jenny Pearce laced
their bloody fingers together and held hands. It was all they
could do, pinned under the roofing that collapsed on them moments
ago.
Buscaino and Pearce joined other Thespian Club and National Honor
Society students yesterday to play to role of "victims"
in a mock disaster. The Gloucester Fire Department, Addison
Gilbert Hospital, and other emergency response teams in the area
simulate a mass casualty twice a year to test their equipment and
stafffor when a true disaster occurs.
In theory, the auto shop's roof collapsed around 3:30 p.m.,
injuring 20 people. To complicate matters, adverse weather
conditions prevented rescuers from using helicopters to transport
casualties to area hospitals.
Capt. Miles Schlichte, a member of the Gloucester Fire Department
for 13 years, ran the rescue operation from inside the shop. It
was his job to prioritize what must be done, and call emergency
response efforts to Deputy Fire Chief Philip Dench, stationed
outside the scene in the high school parking lot. Safety director
Barbara McCarthy directed response efforts at Addison Gilbert
Hospital.
"To be honest, I've written them off already,"
Schlichte said, his glance shifting to Pearce and Buscaino.
Pearce's back was deeply cut, and her shoulder cocked in a way
that it was dislocated. Buscaino's chest was severely bruised,
and she laid motionless, her lips blue and her skin sweaty.
"I'm supposed to be one of the first ones helped," said
Buscaino, about 45 minutes after the roof fell. "I'm dead.
I'm just so dead by now."
Buscaino was right. Schlichte explained to the girls that his
hands were tied until his "heavy equipment guys"
arrived with a fork lift, or some kind of heavy rescue unit to
get the roofing off them.
Gloucester does not have a heavy rescue unit, so the Urban Search
and Rescue post in Beverly must provide it. But the post is
manned by rescuers throughout New England, so there's never any
telling who will respond to an emergency, or how long it will
take for them to get to it.
"You can expect a six hour window before they get
here," Schlichte told the girls, who responded with a groan.
"You're actually my easiest problem here. You're dead."
Fortunately, the situation was make-believe. But if it were real,
more than just getting a fork lift to the scene would have
complicated things.
Most likely, the rescuers would have worked in the dark. A fallen
roof would cause the lights to go out, or force the fire
department to shut off all utilities to prevent a fire from
breaking out.
The roofing also would have buried the students so deeply that
rescuers would have heard them before they saw them.
"Like hunters in the woods, covered with leaves, they'd be
covered in debris and dust," Schlichte said.
The propane leaking out of barrels in the corner of the auto body
shop, and the half-dozen cars parked along the wall, also could
have caused a hazardous situation to develop at any moment,
Schlichte said, and investigating the scene to prevent other
disasters from happening must be addressed before anything else.
"We'd be a good hour, hour and a half into it before we
could do any real work to start getting people out,"
Schlichte said.
Schlichte was also challenged by a disparity of hands. He would
have had 40 people instead of 15 working for him yesterday if the
city paid overtime for the drill, he said. Other fire departments
in the area are volunteer, and few people are able to leave their
day jobs to respond to a mock disaster. Some volunteer fire men
are unable to respond immediately even in real disaster
situations.
Beverly is the closest community with a full-time fire
department, Schlichte said. "If this were a real situation,
half the town would be here," he said. Aside from being
short handed, a shortage of ambulances complicated the drill. Two
from the Gloucester Fire Department were called out to a real
emergency, forcing ambulances from Rockport and Lyons Ambulance,
a private company that services Cape Ann and the North Shore, to
answer the call.
The a shortage of body boards arose, and fire fighter Michael
Chipperini went to the high school's carpentry shop to cut some
make-shift planks. Meanwhile, Pearce and Buscaino waited 15
minutes more for the heavy rescue unit to arrive. "It's
hurry up and wait time," Schlichte said.
Finally, around 4:25 p.m., two air bags arrived -- at least in
theory. Like big rubber balloons, these bags are eased under
debris and blown up to lift it off people trapped underneath.
Worth about $10,000 each, these bags have been on Schlichte's
wish list for years, he said.
"In a collapse, it's the air bags we really need," said
Schlichte as Pearce and Buscaino walked to the ambulances out in
the parking lot. "We've been wanting them for awhile, but
the thing is, the money."
Once the shop was cleared, another scenario was played out at
Addison Gilbert Hospital -- an influx of 20 emergency room
patients, and coordinating when to send them since the hospital
couldn't provide for them all. In the end, three critically
injured patients were transported to ambulance to Beverly
Hospital, and two "walking wounded" patients were by
CATA bus to Ipswich's Cable Emergency Center.
"CATA is actually an integral part of our disaster
plan," said Cayte Ward, director of community relations for
Addison Gilbert Hospital.
In addition to dealing with the mass casualty in terms of
staffing and available beds, the hospital tested its
communication with other hospitals in the area. Could they take
whatever load Addison Gilbert couldn't handle? And were its
emergency lists of doctors, nurses, social workers, and other
emergency respondents up to date? Did the security officers who
directed traffic outside the hospital get the ambulances where
they needed to go?
"Our inter-agency coordination was very good, and we had
tremendous physician and nurse response," said safety
officer Barbara McCarthy. "But communication is always the
thing that will make or break an inter-agency [disaster
response.] You can always improve communication."
The afternoon culminated in a critique of the entire drill,
although hospital personnel nor the Gloucester Fire Department
would comment on the discussion, which lasted 1 1/2 hours.
Given what seems to be a shortage in the city's disaster relief,
sophomore Brian Misuraca is thankful his punctured lung was only
make-believe. "I was the first one they talked to, and the
last one they took," said Misuraca, declared DOA, or dead on
arrival. He certainly hopes this is the closest he'll come to
death for a long time. "I don't want to leave too
soon," he said.
