Medical: Introduction
When disaster strikes, people and animals get injured. Hospitals are overrun by injuries, EMTs and hospital staff are injured, and infrastructure is damaged so professionals can’t respond to injuries. This means that people are on their own.
Your emergency readiness organization is crucial at the Household, Street, Neighborhood, and Community levels when this happens. It can make the difference between life and death.
Household Level
At the household level, the Medical Lifeline is all about compiling a first aid kit and getting basic training in CPR/AED, Stop the Bleed, and First Aid. Those courses are often taught through local organizations like the Fire Department.
Street Level
At the Street Level, neighbors who have undergone some sort of medical training—like First Aid, CPR/AED, Wilderness First Responder—are essential to making sure that seriously injured people stay alive until they can get further help. The Ready Your Street Program ensures that people at the Street Level know what to do during those critical first hours and days after a disaster hits.
Neighborhood Level
At the Neighborhood Level, the medical response is focused on the Disaster Hubs. These are staffed by Wilderness First Responder volunteers who are part of the Medical Response Corps (MRC). These volunteers triage the injuries and illnesses that people from the adjoining neighbors transport to the hubs. They communicate with the Emergency Operations Center to report the numbers and levels of injuries they see so that the EOC can determine which injured people need to be transported to the next level of medical care, the Disaster Medical Center.
Community Level
At the Community Level, the medical response is led by the Community’s professionals at the Fire Department and tackled in part by the Community’s Disaster Medical Center, which is activated a few days after the disaster hits and is staffed by volunteer medical professionals.
The key people at the Emergency Operations Center, with the information provided by the Disaster Hubs, triage the injured and determine who, if anyone, needs to be transported to hospitals unaffected by the disaster and who needs to be transported to the local Disaster Medical Center, once it is set up.