CBRNeWORLD
Chief Roderick Williams, fire chief at Orlando Fire Department, talks to Gwyn Winfield about ensuring that his team remains safe in future terrorist attacks
Health and safety
GW: One of the positive lessons learned for the police was their transport of casualties to the hospital in their own vehicles. That was clearly a useful response in this case, but would not be in every situation. What did the emergency medical technicians (EMT) think about that response? There is a skill in triaging patients, that exceeds throwing the first people to present into a vehicle and driving them to hospital. What has come out of that experience, was it an emergency situation or is that now part of doctrine? RW: This was an event never seen before on American soil, so you need to look at the total picture. The nightclub was located very close to the #1 trauma hospital in Orlando, less than a quarter of a mile away. Any time we have an active shooter or hostage situation the plan is always to stage until the scene is secure and once it is secure we then go into assessment of patients. When the
police department (PD) first reached the scene our units were still staged, as the fire station is right on the corner, and we remained staged until they said the scene was clear. What law enforcement (LE) was encountering was people in immediate need that they had to take to the hospital. Since the hospital was so near, it was easier for them to do that than come to our staging location, which was past the hospital. Once we got established with a triage and treatment area then those individuals came to the triage area.
GW: Post-Orlando, and other mass shootings, there seems to have been a drift towards putting paramedics in harm’s way. Obviously it is a measured risk, and body armour helps, but there is a current trend towards paramedics in the warm zone. The problem with this is that they are very busy with their patients rather than looking
around the scene for danger. Is this a phase that will snap back at some point, or is this the future? RW: I sit on the side of safety first for our personnel, I am not a fan of putting firefighters in the hot zone. What we practise with LE is a warm zone extraction, so the scene is somewhat secure. As a fire department we are not equipped to go into that hot zone, LE need to keep their heads on the swivel, looking for the bad guy and assessing the situation, they don’t need firefighters on their hip when they are making sudden moves. As they clear an area we can go in and do the extraction, that is what we practise here and we have had a proven medical director train our personnel in tactical emergency casualty care (TECC). I am a strong proponent of warm zone extraction but not hot zone, we are ill-equipped and could become victims ourselves.
www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018 How easy is it to define the hot and warm zone for EMTs? ©CBRNe World
February 2018 CBRNe WORLD
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