Emergency training staged at Salish Kootenai College
Caydance Wilson cries as she holds her mother, Dara’s, hand. Dara was a “gunshot” victim. The Wilsons volunteered for roles in the emergency training.
Caydance Wilson cries after her mother was "shot" during emergency training.
Lake County Sheriff’s Deputies approach the Mathias building and subdue a suspicious person, who actually has been chased out of the building by the ”shooter.”
Mobile patients and people stuck in the Mathias Building on Salish Kootenai College Campus run for safety as a Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy cuffs the “shooter” in the mock drill.
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PABLO — Like a scene from a movie, a man staggered from the Mathias Building on Salish Kootenai College Campus after “shooting” people in the building, and then “shot” himself.
This was part of the plot for an emergency training, not a real shooting, held on July 13.
To make the incident more realistic, Jill Lloyd and Adam Powers used “moulage,” pots of make-up, “artificial skin,” fake blood, bullets and “bone” fragments, to turn volunteers into bruised and wounded victims in the training.
David Wallace brought 18 students from Kicking Horse Job Corps, and other community members donated time to play victims. Each victim received information about his or her wound and was encouraged to act out the part.
Academy awards nominees for acting should have gone to Caydance Wilson and Tommy Marko-Franks.
Caydance came to the training with her mother, Dara, who was a “gunshot” victim, and cried quietly and convincingly as she followed EMTs to the ambulance behind her mother’s stretcher.
Marko-Franks had a leg wound and loudly kept nurses apprised of his condition and pain, finally being evacuated from the building in an office chair. After the call went out about the shooter, law enforcement came on scene. While Lake County Search and Rescue patrolled the perimeter, Lake County Sheriff’s Officers and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Law Enforcement officers located and cuffed the shooter and other suspicious persons and secured the building before Emergency Medical Technicians took over, using a triage system of tags — red for critical, yellow for urgent and green for needs medical attention but not urgently.
Wounded people were positioned on tarps in front of the Mathias building as the more severely injured were sent to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson and St. Luke Community Healthcare in Ronan.
Garrett Comfort, Missoula, playing a badly wounded man, got the honor of a trip in the Alert helicopter to St. Joe's.
Comfort, from Missoula, plans to become a Physician’s Assistant and just completed his Emergency Medical Technician training.
After the training, a “hotwash” or debriefing, was held at St. Joe's at about 2 p.m. so problems and bright spots could be highlighted.
Camilla Yamada, manager of plant operations at Providence St. Joseph, and Linda Cox from St. Luke planned the training and held a “table-top” simulation of the training on March 29 at St. Luke’s. Yamada even talked her father-in-law Greg Morigeau, into playing the shooter.
The full scale exercise was amazing, Yamada said. She was blown away by all the volunteers who came out on a Saturday afternoon, including the Job Corps students who were such great patients.
From St. Joseph's point of view, the investment of time from the CEO and emergency preparedness people doesn’t happen everywhere, but it does in Polson, Yamada said.
At the debriefing, Brett Lloyd, exercise director from Spartan Consulting, said everybody was pleased with how well the exercise went.
Lloyd’s job was to develop and manage the exercise so all the participants would have a realistic simulation. Disaster exercise drills test the capacity of local first responders and gives them a chance to practice, without it having to be a real emergency, Lloyd said.
Steve Stanley, Lake County Emergency Management Director, said he agreed with Lloyd that there were “no huge holes.” Almost every agency had some fine-tuning to do, Stanley said.
The Job Corps kids were “so much a part of making it work,” Stanley said. “They were great patients, super role players and have always done a great job.”
Stanley also had kudos for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and said Sheriff Jay Doyle, Undersheriff Dan Yonkin and off duty officers did a fantastic job. He praised the Ronan Fire Department for assisting EMTs and carrying patients.
Lloyd said he’s done more than a 100 of these disaster exercises.
“The cooperation and the teamwork between the agencies in Lake County impressed me,” he added.
