Children's hospital practices for major earthquake aftermath

SALT LAKE CITY — For Chelsey Paz, whose 8-year-old son Adrian is a patient at Shriners Hospitals for Children — Salt Lake, Thursday's Great ShakeOut drill gave her some peace of mind.

"It's an opportunity to help Adrian practice and help lessen anxiety in the event of a real disaster, that he knows that there's help. They're gonna help him," she said.

None of us want to think about the possibility of a major earthquake and the potential aftermath in our community. But to prepare for such a disaster, high school students and patients at the hospital donned casts, bandages and fake blood.

"Help me, help me," the amateur actors cried in surprisingly convincing performances as firefighters practiced triage, wheeling some victims in wheelchairs and some on gurneys through the halls of the hospital.

Shriners, made to look as it might appear two days after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, was a scene of chaos that gave hospital and emergency medical staff the opportunity to practice treating and evacuating some of the most vulnerable children.

"It's to make sure that we know our strengths and weaknesses for our preparedness. And also for the Salt Lake Fire Department and our search and rescue and our EMS to know how to evacuate a special needs population … all have to be evacuated a little bit differently," said Dawn Wright, public relations director for the hospital, emphasizing that Shriners treats patients with orthopaedic conditions such as brittle bones.

Firefighters and emergency medical service staff then took the volunteer actor-victims to a care site staged at Granite Technical Institute.

Shriners was just one health care location where Salt Lake firefighters and emergency medical services staged the earthquake drill Thursday.

According to Tom Simons, emergency management coordinator for the Salt Lake Fire Department, one of the greatest dangers the city faces in terms of large-scale disasters is an earthquake. That is why hospitals and fire departments in the area try to prepare for earthquakes specifically.

However, "this also prepares us for a mass casualty incident," Simons said.

He said it's important for emergency personnel to have an idea of what such an event would look like.

"Because two days after the earthquake, we aren't really going to be in our normal operating procedures. We're gonna have task forces to be assigned, and resources are gonna be really thin," he said.

Two days after a major earthquake, the community most likely won't have much outside help yet, he added.

Adrian said it was fun getting put into a cast with fake blood and a bone sticking out to look like a compound fracture.

"Not fractions, fractures," the 8-year-old explained. "Not like the math fractions."

Students in medical classes at North Summit High School volunteered as actors along with Shriners patients.

"To bring them here and see this firsthand is actually really, I think, beneficial for them and their careers," said Julie Marsh, an anatomy teacher at the high school.

She said many of the students are interested in occupations like nursing and emergency medical services, and the chance for them to see first responders working "in full-swing" was beneficial for them.

Kaden Tinkhan, a junior, wants to go into sports medicine. He said watching all of the professionals at work practicing disaster preparedness was "pretty cool."

Megan Boyer, a junior who hopes to someday become an ultrasound technician, said, "It really is what a disaster's really like, and how you really feel. You're really scared, and you're trying to make sure that everyone around you is OK."

Though Shriners always participates in the Great Utah ShakeOut, this year was the first time the hospital has simulated an earthquake aftermath scene using "mulage," or makeup and fake injuries, debris and strobe lights to simulate a power outage, Wright said.

For more information about earthquakes in Utah, visit the Utah Department of Natural Resources website.

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