November 27th, 2023 By: Mobile Fire Rescue (Paul Phillips)
The Scenario
This was the first day of trauma week. today they introduced us to a mass casualty scenario, where a chlorine bomb was set off in a concert crowd. The Mobile Fire Rescue and the Hazardous Materials Unit showed us the steps they would take in decontaminating and treating mass exposure.
Decontamination can be defined as physical removal or neutralization of a containment. There are hot, warm, and cold zones; the hot zones are where the contamination is high and the cold zones are where the area has been decontaminated. There are four roots of entry for contamination, inhalation, skin absorption, ingestion, and injection. The type of decontamination we were taught about was mass contamination. To decontaminate a large amount of people, the Mobile Fire Rescue would remove their clothing and flush the victim with low pressure and high volume of water. they would walk them through about 40 PSL of water or scrub them down in a kiddie pool. Before entering a hot zone, Mobile Fire Resuce uses a 360 camera to investigate the situation, in order to prevent contaminating themselves.
After we were walked to the scenario, captain Mark Stewart discussed with us the difference in each type of truck or job. he gave us a presentation on decontamination and chemical exposure. today I learned the steps and difficulty it is to decontaminate a large group of people.
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