re-post happing today 4-6-23
There will be "victims" aplenty. There will be ambulances and stretchers and medical personnel running to and fro.
If you happened to drive past, you'd think something terrible had happened.
You would be wrong. The whole thing is an illusion — a carefully orchestrated simulation designed to test our region's disaster response capabilities.
Here's what you need to know.
When is it?
It's scheduled for Thursday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. at a parking lot outside the Freeman Coliseum on the near East Side.
What is it?
They're calling it the San Antonio Mass Casualty Exercise and Evaluation, SAMCEE-23 for short.
What's it all about?
In the organizers' words, it's "a multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional exercise designed to allow emergency responders, public-safety officials and hospitals within South Texas the opportunity to activate, test, and validate portions of their response plans/procedures, required to respond to a simulated mass casualty event."
To simplify, they're going to stage a pretend mass casualty event to gauge whether first responders, medical personnel and hospitals are ready to handle the real thing.
Who's 'they'?
It's being organized by the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, a.k.a. STRAC, an agency that plans and coordinates emergency care in a 22-county region of South Texas.
Who going to participate?
Hospitals, fire departments and EMS crews across the region.
Who else?
"Nearly 600 volunteers and role players will act as victims, friends and family members to stress the system," according to STRAC.
'Stress the system?' Why?
STRAC wants to assess hospitals' "surge capabilities" — whether they can triage, treat and track a whole lot of "patients" all at once.
What else do they hope to learn?
How the region's emergency communication system works, and how EMS crews perform.
They also want to assess something called WebECO.
What's that?
It's a web-based emergency management system that's supposed to improve communications and coordination in a crisis.
What else should we be on the lookout for?
Moulage.
What's that?
Its a kind of special effects makeup that simulates injuries. Student volunteers will be “transformed” through moulage to look like trauma patients, according to STRAC. It won't be pretty.
Will the exercise be confined to the Freeman Coliseum?
No, it also will play out at hospitals and at the Bexar County Emergency Operations Center on the city's Southeast Side.
At the end of the day, what's the point?
"The results from this exercise should be used to improve plans, identify equipment shortcomings and point to training needs," STRAC says.
https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/san-antonio-disaster-drill-17878575.php