With NIMS and ICS, Practice Makes Perfect

A Case Study: Managing the Seaside Classic

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Every July, thousands of youth soccer players and fans gather at URI to play a series of games in a widely-publicized tournament called the Seaside Classic. The event usually brings several hundred requests for medical assistance, is a traffic nightmare, and tests the campus public safety response all around.

“We spend a lot of time preparing for the event. We bring in lots of outside resources including a state multiple casualty incident (MCI) response trailer, a federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), event medical aid station trailers, John Deere Gators converted to carry patients off of fields, and several ambulances,” says Vice Cmdr. Joshua Manfredo, URI’s deputy chief of emergency medical services. “It was a great test and exercise to show that we can operate at a large scale event.”

In 2008, URI also staged five ambulances, including its own, and involved eight different agencies and three hospitals. To complicate things even more, the event had expanded to three other off-site venues that the university’s EMS operated at as well.

To coordinate the massive amount of resources at various locations and different agencies involved, URI implemented a comprehensive ICS structure and utilized it from planning to operation to recovery (see the ICS organization chart here). This was what was involved:

• URI set up several remote first aid stations run out of trailers that were borrowed from the local Yawgoo Valley Search and Rescue organization, which also brought the John Deere Gators.
• The URI EMS station converted its training room into a 15-patient medical aid station, complete with physician oversight, a triage area, an advanced life support treatment area, a basic life support treatment area, a first aid treatment area, and a transportation area for ambulances to take those who needed further care to a hospital.
• A mutual aid partner, the Hope Valley Ambulance Squad, provided assistance with its MCI trailer to support the aid station.
• At the nearest hospital, the state DMAT team set up a field hospital to assist the ER with walk-ups from the event.
• Staging areas were set up at the various venues across the region, and a central incident command post (ICP) was set up in the university’s EMS command office.
• An emergency operations center (EOC) was also established in the EMS conference room to coordinate communications among all the various resources.
• An incident base was also set up to provide rest and breaks for the crews as needed.
• Local restaurants and vendors were tapped to provide donations for food and refreshments for the emer
  gency responders.
• Since the crews were operating in summer conditions on open fields, trailers and tents were also placed out in some of the venues and served as incident camps for shade/rest.

“The event really showed our capability to handle such an event and demonstrated our ability to integrate with local resources seamlessly,” says Dr. Robert F. Drapeau, director of public safety at URI. “All of our departments and units were on the same page and this vastly improved our responses.”

Furthermore, the networked electronic records system URI used synchronized information between the various incident facilities so resource utilization and patient status could easily be tracked by anyone who needed to.