how to treat trauma mass casualty incident patients. The resounding theme is cooperation and communication with other agencies and the hospitals.


GW: One of the big elements that came out of the AARs was the lack of communications. Was it a disappointment that there wasn’t greater sharing of intelligence between the police and fire department? RW: That might be a misconception, our comms were good from the onset. The first arriving officer set up a perimeter and our commanding chief was there and went right to them and talked. As it evolved, and LE brought their mobile command unit, they moved their command team and our fire command stayed with the patrol officer and continued to assess patients. Our failure was not going to the command booth and staying in proximity to the senior commanders. The highest ranking individual on- scene failed to do that, so it delayed other responses getting to the scene. Overall comms were good, they had an officer using radio transmission, communicating patients and treatment. There were certain delays in comms before the final breach, by the time our personnel was informed that the breach was going to happen it had already happened. Had we had someone in the command booth that information would have been transmitted minutes, rather than seconds, earlier. We were all in communication just with indirect comms for the command vehicle.


GW: In terms of your high level lessons learned (LL)… I know that some of them were about the despatch centre and family reunification centre. How has that evolved and had an impact? RW: We shared our LL with Vegas and other communities as [despatch and the reunification centre] was something that we didn’t plan for. Our emergency operations centre opened up as the event unfolded, but I would give our personnel and the city administration kudos for the aftermath. We had to assemble everything from burials to


Triage was complicated by the proximity of the #1 trauma hospital ©CBRNe World


communications experts to the Red Cross and everyone had to be assembled for weeks. We went to the Camping World Stadium and another location to continue to provide services, removal of vehicles, the identification process, burials, food, you name it… The city delivered a well-oiled system, but it was new to us and we sent two members of our team out to Vegas to share our LL for when they got the unification centre up and running.


GW: In terms of LL, there are some quick wins that get taken up and delivered and then there are the slower organisational shifts that take longer to happen and bed down. Should another Pulse happen in three to five years how would the system have changed to handle it better? RW: In every situation you learn something. The number one from Pulse was communications but resources were also important. We are now


equipped and know what to wear, how to respond and we train for it. Every month there is some active shooter situation, and because of Pulse, Columbine, Aurora etc, the response is fast and the resources are better, so the outcome tends to be better once first responders get on the scene. The processing of the scene, helping the victims, mitigating the hazard, it has all got a lot better since Columbine and now you can see a difference. The bad guys are craftier with better weapons, now it is not just handguns, instead they have automatic weapons or a bomb etc. The biggest LL from Pulse was that none of our fire responders got hurt. Communication could have been better, and we have made strides to make changes, we have had table top exercises to make sure that LE and fire get on the same page, we have trained personnel and educated our citizens. Pulse was tragic but it has made our community and our nation better.


www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018


February 2018 CBRNe WORLD


49


CBRNeWORLD


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68