Today,
three
ACT
State
Emergency
Service
(SES)
Units
had
their
rescue
and
first
aid
skills
tested
in
the
ACT
SES
2009
Disaster
Rescue
Competition.
They
competed
against
each
other
in
different
scenarios
(Rescue
from
Heights,
Mass
Casualty
Incident
(MCI),
Hydraulics,
Breaching
&
Shoring
and
Urban
Search
and
Rescue
(USAR))
in
order
to
find
out
which
team
would
represent
the
ACT
in
the
National
SES
Disaster
Rescue
Competition
in
September
on
the
Queensland
Gold
Coast.
Congrats
to
the
Majura
team,
which
won
the
event!
Rivers
Unit
didn’t
enter
a
team
this
year,
but
instead
provided
judges
on
both
the
MCI
stand
and
also
the
breaching
and
shoring
stand,
as
well
as
providing
all
of
the
casualties
for
the
mass
casualty
incident.
The
MCI
stand
involved
each
of
the
teams
being
deployed
to
deal
with
a
seemingly
innocuous
broken
ceiling
pipe
in
a
building
(the
disused
Mt
Neighbour
Primary
School
site).
Once
they
entered
the
building
however,
the
story
was
very
different.
All
up 4
casualties
were
in
the
flooded
room,
where
a
ceiling
‘had
collapsed’
and
the
team’s
real
mission
– to
locate,
treat
and
extract
the
4
casualties
–
was
revealed.
The
4
casualties
were
non-English
speaking
and
happened
to
be
up
to
no
good
when
an
overhead
pipe
burst
and
parts
of
the
ceiling
caved
in
as a
result…
The
big
learning
points
from
the
MCI
event…
-
Don’t get tunnel vision when you find a casualty or casualties! Note their location, deal with any immediate, life-threatening injuries, reassure them that you are going to help them ASAP and continue with your reccie! Don’t focus on the casualties and forget what you were there to do.
-
If casualties have water pouring on them, your first priority is to protect them from the water with whatever is available and get them out ASAP!
-
If you are called to a job that involved an overhead broken pipe, put your wet weather gear on before you start your response.
-
If people have sustained head injuries from a blunt-force trauma (i.e. a collapsing roof), assume that your casualty/ patient has spinal injuries and treat accordingly
-
When safe, get as much info from your casualty/ies as you can so that you can give a good, thorough hand over to the ambos
-
Apply the principles of CREST/ REPEAT in order to decide your order of casualty extraction - particularly if you have a casualty blocking your path
