Tabletop exercises are never the same as setting up actual gurneys, transportation and the other logistics demanded by an emergency evacuation, according to Dr. Timothy McGuirk.
On Thursday, McGuirk and hundreds of other doctors, emergency responders and Florida Air National Guard members took part in a full-scale evacuation exercise at Tampa International Airport. Dubbed "Exercise Patriot South 20," the training aimed to test the joint coordination between the groups.
The James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital serves as the local Federal Coordination Center, or FCC, which holds training sessions like this across the country.
FCCs are locations that can be activated and receive patients when there's a presidental disaster declaration, according to organizer Richard Rhodes.
Rhodes is the area emergency manager for the Veterans Health Administration. It was his fourth time putting an event like this on.
"One of the important things about doing these exercises is it gets our community partners together," he said. "We do these when skies are blue so we all know each other and know how things operate, so when a real tragedy happens, we're ready to respond and perform as best we can."
A hangar at the Sheltair Aviation Facility transformed to a staging area to receive patients, a mix of live actors and not-so-live mannequins, who were "injured" during a Category 4 hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
The hangar had four color-coded sections that patients were sent to depending on the severity of the injury. McGuirk's job as the medical lead was to assess the wounded when the cargo plane landed, then assist physicians and staff in treating them.
"Training is very important," said McGuirk, the director for the emergency department at Haley Veterans' Hospital. "I did 20 years on active duty with the Navy and the motto of all services is 'You want to train like you fight.' You can do tabletop exercises, but it's never the same."
The litter team lined up outside of the aircraft and, when directed, came up in pairs to unload victims. Some mannequins had head wounds, others were treated for smoke inhalation.
In the hangar, groups of medical teams went person-to-person to assess and check vital signs. From there, they would decide whether the patient would take a six mile trip to Tampa General Hospital or was in such bad condition they needed to go to St. Joseph's Hospital only three miles away.
Two white buses were then loaded with the actors and mannequins for the ride to the respective hospitals.
"You learn a lot," McGuirk said. "You do things (or) things don't work quite as smoothly as you might like, then you learn and you reassess. The next time you have a real world episode, then you've learned from it and done some practice, so when the real things happens you're ready."
The last time the local FCC was put into operation was in 2010, when a magnitude 7 earthquake hit Haiti, Rhodes said.
"It could happen anytime," he added.
